Vancouver Housing Market: Is It Too Early To Jump To Conclusion?

The MLS data that was revealed told a different story compared to last year’s own, since the start of August. There were only 3 homes that were sold in Vancouver during that time, while last year’s transaction had 52 homes sold, a huge difference indeed. Despite the bad signs and unfavorable situation, an expert said it’s too early to determine if the Vancouver market is bound to crash or slope woefully.

An acting director of The City Program at Simon Fraser, Andy Yan said: “It’s really hard to say if it’s just cooling off. It could be that everybody who could or would buy at those really high prices a couple months ago are now already in, and now we just really see how the market is retracting itself.”

The data was gathered from MLS listings by a real estate agent named Brent Eilers who said that the occurring changes is a confirmation to the caution he gave about a massive slowdown that will be caused by the non-stop price increase in Vancouver, which has recently experienced detached homes being sold for almost $3.4 million last month. This is way more than the benchmark price when likened to the average income of $84,345 per person.

Eilers also said relating to the matter: “The market in West Van is up 450 per cent since 2001. So is everyone making 600 per cent more income than they were so they can pay their taxes and buy their houses? Of course not. So how has this inflation been financed? By offshore money and record debt.”

Additional to that, he said sales have been going down even before the 15 percent foreign buyer’s tax which is being used as a way to cool down the market came into effect. The sales in June was at 74 and at 44 in July according to the MLS data. The transaction for both months was at 80 and 102 respectively, last year.