August’s Apartment Story
Posted September 8th, 2009 in Real Estate, Statistics | 
August’s month of pictures story continues.
This picture of Vancouver West’s Apartment market mimics Vancouver West’s Attached homes.
Courtesy REBGV
The downhill slide of Active Listings is notable. The listing drop seems as severe as the Attached listings with a little softening in the last couple of months.
The Units Listed blue bar, also is slowly dropping from the highest level in June.
Sold’s red bars match the step down of Units Listed. The highs of June and July now recorded history.
Looking at the Detached and Attached graphs, the picture completes. The theme is consistent. There are fewer Active listings, significant reduction in the number of New Listings and with the exception of Detached, August’s sales declined.
Applying the analogy of an analog alarm clock would suggest that the second, hour and minute hands seem to be working with a steady tick tock as it tells us the time. The fourth hand, the one that indicates when the alarm will sound, is askew – bent from a previous encounter with a drop. Thus, we really are unable to determine when we might expect to hear the jarring loud ring that announces a market change. Of course, when that happens, nobody will care what time it is.
Supposition is that when we hear that sound, our first thought will be that we are late.
*Disclaimer: Statistics Courtesy REBGV. While believed to be accurate they are not guaranteed.
**Numbers provided may vary as they are dynamically posted by the REBGV.
Do you have data that goes back further than when the bottom dropped out of the market in 2008? From the stats I’ve found online it seems the number of active listings almost doubled in 2008 from the average of 2001-2007.
The real telling number in this graph is that sales are starting to lag listings, the market could be showing signs of being over-bought.
The increase in sales starting in Feb 09 coincides directly with the fixed rate mortgage drop of ~5.5% to < 4% and the drop in sales in July with the slight rise of rates as the bond market recovered. We all knew there’s not an endless supply of buyers even at ~4%, hopefully this is the sign buyers are drying up.
Chris,
Re: data – probably, but it may not have been compiled in the manner you seek.
Re: Buyers drying up – that would not be a good thing. Without buyers you don’t have a market then again, without listings of homes for sale you don’t have a market either. The eternal battle for balance and harmony continues.
We’re likely not seeing sellers dry up, active listings has only just returned to the norms of 2001-2007, and is flattening out.
Sales have not lead listings in any month, so why have active listings decreased so greatly? I take this as a sign of sellers giving up. Even with sellers giving up, there’s still an abundance of listings and more new listings than sales.
Hopefully this is a sign that prices will flatten out.
Chris
“so why have active listings decreased so greatly?”
Giving up what? Certainly not the dollars they are getting for their homes. Speculating – there isn’t enough juice in the sale to warrant the ‘move up’. Thinking older boomers – if your current home is nearly paid for and the kids are almost gone, would you take on more debt for a bigger newer home you might not need? Just sayin….