Alley Oop

See-Saw – Regional House Sales Up – Dollars Down

Finding Religion

The guiding light to all things real estate in the province of B.C. – the British Columbia Real Estate Association, released some provincial MLS® news today.

Finding Balance

Cameron Muir BCREA’S resident ‘Chief’ economist, tells us that we have blasted forward to another one of those things he calls a balanced market. Noted, is that the title to the piece is subtitled with a little thing called “Regional Differences Persist” leaving one to wonder if it – the provincial market, is really balanced. Your view depends on which end of the See-Saw you occupy!

It doesn’t really matter to those sitting on the Vancouver or Victoria end of the See-Saw board since these two towns seem to have kicked harder then the other side to push the market up to the ‘Chief’s’ state of provincial balance. Chief Muir, hastens the beat on his drum proclaiming the province “climbed 53% this July over the same month last year”. A first since April 2008!

Tipsy

The imbalance to the balance is as Muir points out is that “Vancouver and Victoria propelled the province into balanced conditions last month.” That being the case the rest of the province must be burning in hell which Muir claims has a “reliance on a struggling resource sector and ‘a’ recent spate of forest fires ‘that’ have contributed to a more gradual pace of improvement.”

Courtesy BCREA

Now it’s been a while since the joy of riding a See-Saw and having that tipsy feeling was part of my daily experience but, sensed is that the imbalance felt, rests in Muir’s last words of his press release.

“Sales dollar volume declined 10 per cent to $21 billion over the same period last year. A total of 46,380 units were sold in the first seven months of 2009, down 6 per cent from 2008, while the average MLS® price declined 4 per cent to $451,758.”

Alley Oop

The ‘Chief’ has spoken and with each bang on his drum we are to believe that you can have one side of the See-Saw – the Sales to Listing Ratio, riding high and the other – the Average price, riding low and get away with shouting that the market “balanced”. Alternate perspective of balance might suggest the ‘Chief’ caught too much smoke from those fires and is choosing to tell us what to see rather than what he saw! Then again,we are riding a See-Saw where perspective changes frequently, so it could just be a “regional difference” in finding balance.

*Disclaimer: Statistics Courtesy REBGV or, BCREA. While believed to be accurate they are not guaranteed.

** BCREA Report