A Grizzly with a Flashlight
Posted May 20th, 2009 in Buying or Selling, Real Estate, Real Estate Stuff, Statistics | 
According to Rudy Nielsen, President of Landcor, we will have to wait till the results of Q2 2009 to find out if that light at the end of the Vancouver real estate tunnel is real or, just a ‘grizzly bear with a flashlight.’
Report Highlights:
- Greater Vancouver accounted for 48.1% of B.C.’s total residential property sales in Q1 2009
- Volume dropped significantly from Q4 2008
- Prices softened with condo’s taking the biggest decline
- Lower mortgage rates, lower prices moving buyers off fence
- Be worried – unemployment will increase resulting in fewer sales and stalled sales.
- Economists forcast recovery Q4 2009 after US reverses recession. If not think late 2010.
Key findings
- Q1 2009 property sales fell province-wide, with some regions being harder hit than others. In the Kootenays sales dropped 56%, in the Okanagan 55% and on Vancouver Island, 51% from Q1 2008.
Q1 2009 property prices also fell. The largest drop in the average sales price was 21.2% for an attached unit in the Fraser Valley region.- 2 regions in BC bucked the trend of falling prices: the Kootenay region, where the condominium average sales price increased 25.7% from Q1 2008 followed by the North/Northwest where the condominium average sales price increased 18.1%.
- When comparing month over month sales in Q1 2009, Greater Vancouver shows a steady increase with February and March posting increases over previous months.
While we have seen a great deal of sales activity between January and April, Realtors are reporting multiple offers on many properties yet, concurrently, there also signs that the number of sales is slowing. We’ll have to wait to see if the bear is using the energizer bunny’s batteries.
