Happy New Year! Hope you had some quality time with friends and family. 2021 has been another crazy year. Extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Major roadways washed out and massive flooding. A new covid variant that is sweeping through the world. Record stock prices. And with Vancouver real estate, it has been a record year.
Home sales in 2021 in Metro Vancouver made an all time high. There were 43,999 sales in 2021. That is 42.2% higher than last year, 73.6% higher than 2019 and 4% higher than the previous all-time high set in 2015.
In the past year, both detached home and townhome benchmark prices increased 22% while apartment increased 12.8%. Maple Ridge saw the largest increase. 34.7% for the overall benchmark price and 42.2% when we just look at detached homes only.
For the month of December, it was another strong month. Even though the sales were 13.1% lower than last December and 21.6% lower than last month, it is still 33.4% about the 10-year December average. Last month was 33.6% above the 10-year November average, so I would argue the market did not cool down in December.
The prices definitely did not. In the month of December, the benchmark prices for detached homes went up 2.1%, for townhomes it went up 1.5% and for apartments it went up 1.2%. It is no surprise when you look at the sales-to-active listing ratios as it continued a 6 month trend of heading higher. Sales-to-active listing ratios is a metric that gauges the supply and demand of the real estate market and serves to indicate price action. When the ratio is above 20% for months, then prices are expected to move up.
Most people expect a healthy market in 2022. Slower sales volume but still much above the 10 year average while prices will continue to increase but also at a slower pace.
