August 2020 Vancouver Real Estate Market Update

I have very good news for you today. I will show you the percentage of sales year over year by different property types – detached, condos, townhouses. Will look at what’s going on with prices with the different property types and what seems to be the trend because there is a trend starting to take place that’s a little different from what we used to. Let’s have a look at what is going on.

Here are sales from January till the end of August as well as Active Listings, Months of Inventory, and Benchmark Price. COVID hit in the middle of March, so April and May Sales dropped substantially. In June and July, Sales started to pick up and we did 3047 Sales in August which is a bit down by 2.6% over Sales in July. This is common as a lot of people take holidays in August. If we look at the months of Inventory we are sitting in the Balanced market more towards the Seller’s market in the month of August with 4.2 months. Prices are up month over month by 0.7%

Let’s compare 2019 sales over 2020. 2231 last august, 3047 this august – up by 36,6%. That is a huge number. What about prices? We are up by almost 5% compare last August and this August. Things are looking very good. This is interesting here if you look at your months of inventory. Other than 2017 which is this green line, Months of inventory is as low as it’s have not been in quite a while. Of cause during COVID we bounced up here, but now we are sitting at 4.2 months of Inventory in August. Last August we were at 6 months. So we are down substantially, so the pricing is really starting to strengthen.

This what I find very interesting. Last August in detached we did 706 sales, this August 1095, we are up by 55%. Huge number. In townhouses – same thing up by 51%. But in the Condo market only by 19%. What is this indicating? It is indicating that the condo/apartment market is starting to soften a little bit compared to the Detached or Townhouse market. Why would this be happening? I think with COVID people do not want to live as much in high-density housing right now. They are probably very concerned. Plus the second reason that the people need more space as they work from home and home school their kids. That is why we see a trend happening here.

What about the price? In Detached the prices are up by almost 6%, townhouses 4.4% and condos almost 5%. So the biggest price increase percentage-wise is happening in the detached market.

When we look at the market we are seeing some good signs. And another good sign as we are moving in the fall that there are over 200,000 jobs added in August. At the high point, our unemployment rate reaches about 13.5%, now we are floating down around 10. It is still high, but it is much better from what it was. I think we will have very strong fall months and we will see more buyers for Detached and more Sellers for Apartments. http//MariaRealtor.ca