East Vancouver Real Estate Market Update – January 2017

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East Vancouver Real Estate Market Update – January 2017

Happy New Year WeLoveEastVan.com readers! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and managed to survive the (ongoing) cold temperatures and icy streets.

As expected, the Real Estate Market was in full swing come January 3rd. We saw new listings hit the market, along with re-lists from the fall, a trend that will continue as the market ramps up for Spring. We’re entering a new Real Estate “cycle”, so it will be interesting to see if the market continues in the same manner as it did in the fall (which, admittedly, was still unsettled after the changes made by the Government) or if we’ll see a noticeable change to prices, one way or the other. I imagine the different markets – condos, townhouses and houses – will move at different paces, so blanket statements about the market likely won’t apply.

Given all of these recent changes to the mortgage market, mortgages are that much more confusing. If you’re thinking about getting into the market and haven’t yet spoken with someone, make that your first priority. You’ll be surprised how a good Mortgage Broker can ensure you know your options while keeping in mind your current and future financial goals.

We’re making one big adjustment here at WeLoveEastVan.com: instead of Average Price, going forward we’ll be using HPI Price. The HPI Price is a more pure measure of housing prices, representing the price of a typical property within each market. The HPI Price takes into consideration what averages and medians don’t: items such as lot size, age, number of rooms, etc. These features become the composite of the ‘typical house’ in a given area. Each month’s sales determine the current prices paid for bedrooms, bathrooms, fireplaces, etc. and apply those new values to the ‘typical’ house model. We think this will bring a more realistic measure of prices, though keep in mind you can’t compare the HPI Prices this month to the previous Average Prices I’ve mentioned, but the graphs I will include will give you an idea of the trend over time.

Looking at the current market, the sales to active ratio was 72% for condos in East Van (quite high), 57% for townhouses (also quite high) and 12% for detached houses (typically normal, though quite low compared to the last few years). The sales to active ratio for each market was higher this past month than any other month since August (only 1% higher for detached houses and 17% higher for condos). This increase could be caused by a few things, but two reasons come to mind: there are fewer listings available in December and Buyers are finally coming back to the table after laying low following the 15% foreigner’s tax announcement.

Let’s see what the numbers say.. (Green is Detached Houses, Blue is Townhouses, Orange is Condos)

Total Inventory (remember December is typically slow):

Sales to Active Ratio:

HPI Price (*** See my note above ***):

For our specific updates on each market, check out our blogs below:

East Vancouver Condo Market Update

East Vancouver Townhouse and Half Duplex Market Update

East Vancouver Detached House Market Update

Contact us if you need anything real estate related, we can either help or pass you on to someone who can. Here’s to a great 2017!