Welcome to 2024!
We hope you all had a fantastic holiday season, and that your new year is starting off with a bang! For all you sci-fi fans out there, we are now living almost 9 years after Back to the Future 2, 5 years after Blade Runner took place, and we're only 4 years away from 12 Monkeys!
 
As expected, December was a slow month with a total of 1,336 sales in Greater Vancouver. This figure was 3% higher than the same time last year. Currently, detached homes favour buyers at 12%, while condos and townhouses slightly favour sellers at 22%. Overall, the region is balanced at 18%.
 
Although these numbers may seem as bleak as a summer's day in Blade Runner, there are signs that things might be starting to shift.

Stable Rates & Increased Buyer Activity
We noticed an uptick in buyer activity shortly after the Bank of Canada made its rate announcement. This was especially true in the Fraser Valley and is reflected in the Sales-To-Active Ratios, which increas ...

2023 in the Review Mirror
It feels like just yesterday I was wrapping up my last year in review, and here we are again, ready to delve into the highs and lows of another eventful year in real estate.

Chapter 1 - A Rocky Start
The year started off with a fizzle with January being one of the slowest months on record with only 1,031 total sales for Greater Vancouver; less than half the sales from January '21! The preceding months hadn't been a walk in the park either, with a fall market that barely materialized and quickly sputtered out as interest rates continued to climb.

However, a glimmer of hope appeared in early February. Buyers, enticed by the allure of significant discounts and stable rates, made a swift comeback. In the blink of an eye, prime deals were snatched-up, and inventory levels plummeted. This set the stage for the next chapter.

Chapter 2 - Where have All the Houses Gone?
The market swiftly transformed from a bust to a boom, with buyers scramblin! ...

Opportunity Might Be Knocking at Your Future Front Door
This August, I celebrated my 9th year as a Realtor. Over those years, I've experienced pretty much every type of marketplace imaginable from the painfully slow one at the beginning of 2019 to the insanity inducing markets such as 2016 & more recently after the COVID lock-downs. During my time, I've only seen fleeting glances of balanced markets where both buyers and sellers have an even playing field. However, these are as rare and mysterious as Sasquatch sightings and are often nothing more than nostalgic stories I've been told by "seasoned" Realtors remembering the good old days. Honestly, who knows if they even existed at all!

It's fair to say that the majority of my career has been spent preparing my home buyers or sellers for multiple offers. Although I do love the thrill of a good multiple offer when I'm on the sell side, my excitement turns to sadness when my buyers look to me with incredulous eyes as I'm force! ...

Your Market Update for August 2023
Sales activity slid for three consecutive months over the summer period following the typical seasonal cycle of the GVRD. In August, sales totalled 2,296 for Greater Vancouver which is 22% more sales when compared to the same time last year and 14% below the 10-year average.

With 2 recent rate hikes coinciding with the aforementioned seasonal cycle, it's hard to say with full certainty how much of the slowdown can be blamed on the Bank of Canada's ruthless campaign to curb inflation and how much is simply because of the typical lull we experience over the summer months.

As Andrew Lis, REBGV’s director of economics and data analytics said. “It’s been an interesting spring and summer market, to say the least. Borrowing costs are fluctuating around the highest levels we’ve seen in over ten years, yet Metro Vancouver’s housing market bucked many pundits’ predictions of a major slowdown, instead postin. ...