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The big news in the past month is the recent massive hike in Strata building insurance premiums. Horror stories tell of hikes of 350% to 780% increase to the premium. One condo building in Abbotsford had to implement a one-time levy of $,3000 a unit and a doubling of the monthly strata fee to $600. And if you think that is bad, try not being able to get insurance. There are buildings that are having trouble getting insurance. This can potentially cause the bank to pull financing which means they want their money back but you can’t sell the unit because any new buyer will not be able to get financing. It is unclear why the huge increases now. Some say old buildings with bad

Looks like the market is back to a healthier pace. November continues on with the recovery story. The November sales were 4% above the 10-year November average. As the year closes out, the number of new listing falls as usual. It is 25.7% lower than October, but it is also 13.7% below last November. The total number listed is 12.5% below last November as well which is helping support the prices. Prices are remaining fairly stable. The benchmark price for an apartment has gone down 0.2% in the last month while the prices of detached homes and attached homes has gone up 0.3% and 0.2% respectively. The sales-to-active listings ratio which gives an indication of demand in the market is a healthy 23.2%. The higher

From the October real estate sales statistics, it does seem that September was the bottom of the market. All stats in October are looking better. Sales rose 22.5% from last month and were 9.8% above the 10-year October sales average. The inventory is lower. Compared to last October it was down 5.8% and compared to September 2019 it was a 9% decline. In part due to higher sales volume and in part due to a 16.3% reduction in new listings in October. This in turn, resulted in higher prices across all property types. The benchmark price for a detached home is 0.3% higher than the month before; though, still down 7.5% year-over-year. For apartments, the benchmark price increased 0.2% from the previous month while it

The September sales number in Metro Vancouver were 1.7% below the 10-year average. That is pretty close to “normal” and a vast improvement over last year. A 46.3% improvement to be exact. This probably signals that the worse of the price drop is over; however, I don’t expect a quick bounce back in price unless a lot of Canadians return from Hong Kong. The inventory has not changed much. 2.7% more when compared to September 2018 and 0.3% more when compared to last month. The sales-to-active listings ratios have been the same for about 3 months now but while prices stopped dropping last month for condos and townhouses, the trend has reversed this month. For September the sales-to-active listings ratios were 12.7% for detached homes,

August real estate sales numbers are similar to July’s. Basically, this August’s numbers beat last year’s August numbers, but are slightly weaker than this July’s, but that can be due to seasonality. Less new listings and recent increased sales are reducing inventory but not enough to bring down the inventory significantly. There were 3.5% less new listing and 15.7% higher sales than last August. As a result, the inventory is 5.9% lower than this July; however, compared to last August it is still 13.3% higher. The sales-to-active listings ratios are hovering around the same numbers as last month. For August it was 12% for detached homes, 18.4% for townhomes and 21.2% for apartments. Typically, a reading between 12% and 20% is considered balanced. The higher