Friday, February 09, 2007

Fraser Valley Real Estate Market - January Analysis

So I finally got a few moments to work on some of my data and charts for the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board's January statistics release and here are the results.

The house price indes is up 1.4% after 3 straight months of declines putting the index value equal to the September 2006 level.


Active listings have decreased from the October high of 7438 to the January level of 6099 which is 29% higher than the January 2006 active listings of 4722 and marginally higher than the January 2005 active listings of 5950. Seems like a fairly normal seasonal variation.


Median prices have been stagnant for the past 7 months with no significant changes since June 2006. It seems like there is no rush to buy or sell in this market.



And lastly, the comparison of the Months of Inventory and the Quarterly Price Changes for the past two years. Still showing an exceptionally strong inverse correlation of -0.81 the months of inventory are at a moderately high level right now at 6.1 and quarterly price changes are non-existent.






The next few months will tell the story of things to come. We could see further stagnation and more inventory with low demand and subsequent price decreases. Conversely, we could see a resurgence of demand and tighter supply. I don't see the latter scenario as very likely given poor demand at the current price levels and all of the units under construction right now and due to complete in the next few months.

4 comments:

mohican said...

I'm very skeptical that we will see any major price changes (up or down) in the next 3 - 6 months.

I don't see prices increasing because they are already at extreme limits of affordability and there is a seemingly endless supply of new homes coming onto the market during the next 6 - 12 months in the Fraser Valley.

I also don't really see prices declining much without some kind of external catalyst. It seems that demand is stable even at these insanely high prices and although there is a lot of supply in the market now and even more coming I don't see it drastically affecting the price situation at least not for another few months.

By mid-year we could be talking about a very different market though and I think the next 3 months of data and activity will tell the story of things to come.

Paul said...

great analysis

solipsist said...

the next 3 months of data and activity will tell the story

I'm looking forward to that.

StevenHWicker said...

I got here much interesting stuff. The post is great! Thanks for sharing it! Homes for Sale in North Burnaby