The past 4 weeks of sales in Real Estate in Vancouver have been on fire. It’s been an incredible change of pace from even just last December which was one of the best Decembers on record. It’s mind boggling. Keeping up with the pace and demand means working 7 day weeks and 16 hours days. We painstakingly looked at all the sales in our 4 key markets (North & West Van, East & Van West. We counted the number of over asking sales for you, we tallied up the assessed values to give you the ratio of what homes were selling for in conjunction with that assessed value (from July 2020) and we show you what you are getting on average for that price in both the attached and detached market. These are drilled down stats you won’t find anywhere else!

The clear winner is the detached market hands down with East Van leading at 61% of all sales going over asking and North Van a close 2nd with 59% over asking. The price jump shows up in the amount these properties are going over assessed values. Here North Van is in the lead with properties averages 27% over their assessed values. It’s more affordable in East Van, but the best deals are in West Vancouver if you have the money to play in that market.

In the attached market, again, North & East Van come out on top, though it’s not the same intensity with 35% going over the asking price. However, the increase in price is not as significant with North Van showing the highest rise at 12% over assessed. West Van again is a relative bargain, with hardly any sales and those sales only 2% over the assessed. It’s a great time to downsize to West Van!

2016 was an incredibly busy market driven by strong demand and low inventory. Since then the government has implemented a slew of taxes to slow down that hot market and the market did just that. Now the question begs, just how much effect was brought on by the myriad of new taxes at that time - and how much was just the natural course of market movement? We all suspected the market was about to take a breather regardless (in 2017) and now, with this current madness that has little to do with “Speculation or Foreign Buyers" the tax has no effect in cooling this desirable market.

This current year is like no other. We have all been incredibly affected by COVID 19 and our lives have changed - some forever. Those who have lost loved ones or businesses are faced with rebuilding their lives. So many of us have been separated from family and friends and continue to struggle with the void, but the real estate market has taken off! We remember back in April 2020 when many people were predicting, or should I say swearing, gloom and doom over the industry and losses of up to 50%. It never happened, in fact the opposite, sales stubbornly picked back up after 1-month hiatus and have continued on an upward trajectory, but there is no inventory! By that we mean the lowest number of homes available in forever. Below is a graph tracking the sales to list ratio (number of listings compared to sales) over the past 10 years.

The peaks you see indicates high demand with low inventory, whenever you see that rise and peak, it means there is pressure on price – basic economics of supply and demand.

The question, we REALTORS® get most often is “where is it going” and “where and when will it end”? There are always two modes of thought – each resides on opposite ends of the spectrum. We have learned enough to know even the very best, most educated are wrong 50% of the time. Best guess is we have further to go on the trajectory and it will surpass the last one before it ends. That's our thought.

One last graph before we end this article. Let’s look at the House Price Index (HPI)– the averages of the sales and how the price of a home has changed in the last 10 years.

 Click here for a live interactive graph

From this graph showing the peak of 2016 and 2017, one can see that WV and pretty much NV and EV all peaked in August of 2016, however the market remained strong and had a final run in 2017 with the West side seeing the highest prices in July of 2017. The price recovery began sometime around September 2019, but with very few sales, we didn’t see much momentum till the beginning of 2020. There was a very short stall of sales in March, but no price drops. As of today, prices in the higher end of the market (West Van & Westside) have not fully recovered, but the more affordable markets have surpassed the highs of 2016. Here is how it looks in average dollars.

Are we at the peak again? Or, is there room to go beyond 2016? Our guess is there is a little more room with low interest rates and Hong Kong just may come knocking again…stay tuned.