“Fickle” is perhaps one word that best describes the Vancouver real estate market for 2014. According to the Globe and Mail, real estate agents in the city have announced that current market conditions seem to favor sellers, rather than buyers, thanks to data they’ve gathered last month. The numbers say that the sales-to-active-listings ratio in Greater Vancouver is currently at 19.7 percent, about 4 percent higher than last year’s figures, leading to the following developments:
“The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported Friday that residential housing sales climbed to 3,050 in April, up 16.1 per cent from 2,627 resale properties that changed hands a year earlier.
The benchmark home index price rose 3.6 per cent year-over-year to $619,000 in April for single family-detached homes, condos and townhouses that sold on the Multiple Listing Service.
There were a total of 15,515 active listings last month, down 7.3 per cent from a year earlier.”
Fortunately, experts would still call the market pretty “balanced” as far as sales-to-active-listings ratio goes, because it needs to be below 15 percent to favor buyers or above 20 percent to favor sellers. That said, this is just one factor that has a direct influence on real estate prices in Vancouver. Therefore, it pays for buyers and sellers alike to be aware of current events before they work with reliable real estate services in the city like Vancouver Canada Homes. After all, a seller’s market for May 2014 is just a possibility, not a certainty.
In most cases, the economy plays a big role in determining real estate prices in Canada. This is because a good economy creates more jobs, and more jobs, in turn, lead to a higher demand for residential and commercial properties. However, policy changes can also carry just as much weight, especially if a real estate market is fuelled by foreign investments. This is the reason why a great number of Chinese investors left Canada for other countries, after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty imposed stricter immigration laws on February 2014.
Prices for real estate in Vancouver, B.C. can also be affected by demographics. For example, if a certain city has a larger proportion of retirees rather than young people, then it is likely that that location has a greater demand for affordable houses and vacation homes, rather than high-rise condos. Of course, this doesn’t always hold true, which is why it is important for real estate buyers and sellers to be in the loop on current market factors before they make deals.
(Source: Vancouver real estate edges closer to seller’s market, The Globe and Mail, May 02, 2014)
