Statistics gathered from across the world has revealed that more and more buyers are getting into the luxury real estate industry this year. According to OPP Connect editor Adrian Bishop, this is partly because luxury properties, or properties valued more than 1 million USD, are seen worldwide as safe and lucrative investments, wherein the luxury residential market is not expected to crash or change drastically given the intrinsic value of the properties. For this reason, luxury markets, including Vancouver’s, are attracting a new breed of buyers, particularly younger millennial investors.
For those interested in Canada’s luxury market, they may want to give the Vancouver luxury real estate industry a try. For starters, Vancouver has a much lower entry price for luxury properties (about 2.8 million CAD, as of September 2013) than the other luxury real estate markets in the country, i.e. Toronto and Montreal. The only thing these buyers have to worry about is finding a reliable real estate agent, such as someone from established companies like Vancouver Canada Homes, who can find a luxury property that suits their needs and preferences. This is especially true if the buyers are young, high-income professionals as described above, because they don’t fit the usual luxury real estate buyer profile in Canada.
More often than not, buyers of luxury properties in Vancouver are usually 40-50 years old and have a family of four. These people tend to be senior professionals for financing, investment banking, and medical companies, and they usually own a secondary and/or vacation home as well. People born after 1980 don’t entirely fit this description, which means that they may not have a wealth of experience in buying luxury homes. They may not be aware that a downtrend in the market can actually benefit them, rather than the other way around. Similarly, they may not be aware of how current events can shape the luxury market.
For instance, about 60 percent of investments in Vancouver’s luxury properties come from domestic investors, but that figure is likely to have grown much larger, now that Canada has imposed stricter immigration laws. According to many real estate agents in the city, a great number of the best luxury real estate in Vancouver can be found in Shaughnessy, Point Grey, and Kitsilano. However, trends in the economy have allowed other neighborhoods like Ambleside to enter the luxury market as well.
While it is nice to see plenty of newcomers to the real estate industry, they must know that obtaining safe and lucrative investments isn’t as easy as it sounds.
(Source: Sales of luxury US$1m-plus homes ‘explode’, OPP Connect, April 17, 2014)
