By Anne Abraham — January 12, 2019

Over the last year, we’ve seen the real estate market transition from a seller’s market into a buyer’s market.

Detached housing

In the month of December, there wasn’t much activity going on in Kitsilano in terms of sales of detached homes. But what we did see was that the sales of the two homes happened much faster than in the previous month. This kind of quick sale implies that the buyers saw that the homes were listed at an acceptable market price.

Attached housing

During the holiday season, there was a noticeable difference in newly listed homes. There were a substantially fewer amount of homes newly listed and even fewer sales. Now, this isn’t unusual as this trend is in line with historical patterns. You might also want to know that the only 4 of the 16 homes sold were at or above asking price. This downward pressure on market pricing shows that there continues to be fewer buyers in winter, allowing for more negotiation opportunities.

Summary of 2018

2018 introduced some very new policies in Vancouver real estate. Just to give you a refresher, the year started off with the new mortgage stress test rules that came into effect in January. These were introduced by the federal bank to regulate homebuyers across the country to help prevent them from taking on levels of debt that might be too risky. We then ran into the new empty home tax to manage home affordability and to discourage outside buying that could drive up the sales price.

Overall, it’s been a pretty eventful year for Vancouver real estate. It’s certainly been a bumpy ride, but some real estate professionals claim that a correction is in the making. We are currently sitting in a buyer’s market where there is more selective buying.

A report was recently released by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada (sothebysrealty.ca) that claimed Eastern Canada’s metropolitan areas led the nation in top-tier real estate performance throughout 2018. On the other hand, Western Canada experienced major stressors in Vancouver with the new taxation laws. This pushed both Vancouver and Calgary markets into a buyer’s market.

Information taken January 8, 2019 from REBGV and MLS by Nick Chen PREC* deemed accurate from the respective sources. Nick Chen PREC* is the provider of the data and analysis to the writer for the purposes of creating an informative article providing informative publicly available information in a condensed manner. All data is presented to show a snap stat of the real estate market at the given time, further detail requires in-depth consultation and appropriate disclosures with a licensed real estate professional.