Happy New Year East Van! I hope your holidays were relaxed and enjoyable, giving you the energy for a great year.
The Real Estate Market slowed to one notch above a halt over the holidays, which was expected and welcome! I did see a handful of listings sell over the last few weeks – many of these listings have been on the market for a little while so it’s nice to see old inventory sell to make way for new inventory coming up over the next couple of months.
This will be a fairly quick update, but December still had the activity and interest levels despite much lower inventory numbers, so I expect the New Year market to be just as busy. Inventory will slowly start trickling out on January 4th with – typically – the highest level of inventory seen in the Spring.
There are still a lot of Buyers out there – with good properties still receiving more than one offer (I’m seeing 2+ offers on mediocre listings and 5+ offers on good listings) you have to expect a lot of competition between Buyers. Don’t be put off if a listing doesn’t have any other interest – somethings it’s a unit where new floors and a paint job will do wonders, and sometimes it’s the staging (or lack thereof) and sometimes it’s just priced too high. If you see the potential, then go for it. Mortgage Rates are still incredibly low (I’ve seen 0.99% recently!) so I anticipate a lot of Buyers will want to continue their search.
If you’re interested in entering the market this year, prepare yourself for multiple offer scenarios. This means ensuring that your financing is pre-approved and as organized as possible, this means seeing properties as early as possible when they hit the market and preparing yourself for the emotional rollercoaster that is competitive offers. Here’s a blog I wrote explaining the scenario and what you should be thinking about: About Multiple Offers.
If you’re thinking about selling your property in the New Year, give me a call to chat about timing, the purchase and sale process and what you can do now to increase the value of your home (staging works!). There are still a lot of Buyers out there to buy your unit, but you may have to be prepared for competition on your next purchase. Plenty of details to chat about so don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to get started kristi@realestatevancity.ca or 778-387-7371.
Onto the stats:
Here are some thoughts on the Vancouver East and Vancouver West Real Estate Markets. If you’d like numbers or information regarding particular neighbourhoods, or types of properties, don’t hesitate to ask.
For some reason the HPI Price hasn’t updated yet on the graphs so unfortunately I can’t comment on that stat, though once the system updates, it will be reflected in the links below.
Vancouver West Real Estate Stats up to and including December 2020
Inventory dropped significantly for each type of product, which we expected. The detached house market dropped the most, so it will be interesting to see if we see an influx of new detached listings this month.
The sales to active numbers are still really strong about 21% for houses and townhouses, 26% for 2 bedroom condos and 39% for 1 bedroom condos. Nice to see the 1 bedroom condo market is busy because that keeps the market active.
It looks like there was a slight uptick in prices this past month, but overall, it looks like the prices of Westside properties stayed fairly steady this past year, despite the increase in activity.
East Vancouver Real Estate Stats up to and including December 2020
Inventory dropped significantly this month, as expected, but it was still higher than inventory at this time last year, and no doubt because the market was busy enough that some Sellers were feeling confident. The sales to active ratio increased in December but that is due to decreased inventory and sales rather than increased activity levels. Overall, there were more sales this year than the last couple years, which isn’t a surprise given that 2018 and 2019 were slower.
The sales to active ratio this past month were really high – easily a strong Sellers Market which each type of product showing a 40% or more absorption rate.
It looks like average and median prices remained somewhat steady, except for townhouses, though I imagine that is more due to the average price of the product available vs a decline in that particular market. I expect the HPI Price to show that things were fairly steady this past month when the graph is updated with current data.
Looking back on the Average Price to start the year – townhouses remained steady but the pice of detached houses increased by almost $100k. Detached houses in general are always going to have value in a City where the number of detached houses is declining, but the pandemic drove everyone’s desire to have their own space and outdoor space. I expect detached houses to continue to see a lot of interest from Buyers over the next year.
If you have any questions – regardless of how simple – don’t hesitate to send me an email or give me a call: kristi@realestatevancity.ca or 778-387-7371.
A reminder to keep supporting local businesses. January is always a slow month for restaurants, and more so this year. Order take out from your favourites to show them some support. It’s also a good time of year to start working on some home projects – everything from exterior touch ups, gutter cleaning, furnace and duct maintenance, grout cleaning and re-sealing, carpet cleaning, spring garden planning and more.
Here’s to a fantastic start to the New Year!
– Kristi