Sunday, January 02, 2011

Greater Vancouver Sales Data Update

I've compiled a graph of sales in the REBGV (Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver) over the past 12 years.

2010 was a below-average year for sales but not significantly so. As with 2009 there was a surge in Q4 sales that helped muster some respectability to the sales levels. 2011 starts anew; as a friend from Australia recently commented, the markets in Canada and Australia are drifting into uncharted waters.

Happy New Year

2 comments:

AndrewJ said...

Right now it really looks like stabilization of the Vancouver market is possible. We've burned through the excess inventory and have a reasonably low amount of inventory to start the year. It requires interest rates to remain low which seems like a possibility for the next little while. The US starting to bounce back would help a lot too.

jesse said...

Stabilization? Isn't that what 2010 was? About 5% rise YOY seems relatively "stable" to me!

A US rebound would help, however it's this blog's thesis that Canada and Vancouver's prices relative to household incomes and rents are too high and that's the elephant in the room. Restricting supply will cause rents to increase but not incomes.

In terms of a US housing market recovery, based on the analysis by Fed members and bloggers like CalculatedRisk, prices still look high nationally. It's likely many years off to where prices will merely begin to track inflation again, let alone increase above this.