I’ve got the numbers for February for Greater Vancouver. Every month I am trying to change it up a little bit, to hopefully deepen your understanding what’s going on in the market place.
So I will look into 5 last years and compare January, of January, of January, of January, of January, so you could see whats going on for the last 5 years. Also I will talk about Months of Inventory in the different property types. And at the end I will give you a little forecast about what I think is going to happen this year.
Let’s have a look at the numbers. If we go back to 2015 you see we did 1913 sales. Then, what happened, we went up by 31% and did 2519 sales in 2016. In 2017 we had Foreign Buyers Tax and our sales dropped by 39%, we did 1523. In 2018 we went by 19% up to 1818 sales. And in 2019, you can see we are down by 39% from 2018 and had 1103 sales. Obviously, very low, the lowest year we’ve had over last 5 years by far. However the numbers are up slightly from December, but not much.
Lets look into active listings. Because remember the supply, demand and months of inventory will determine what’s really going and show the strength or weakness of the market.
So back here in 2015 we had almost 1100 listings. But then what happened, the market got very strong in 2016 and listings went down to 6600. In 2017 inventory went up a little bit and sales wend down a little bit. In 2018, 6900 active listings down a little bit because again sales went up a bit in 2018. Very interesting when you look at it. And then 2019 sales way down and active listings went way up to 10000. Which really is about the same as in 2015, but the sales are way off from 2015.
What is that do to the months of inventory? So back in 2015 we had 5.6 months of inventory. Remember 2016 we had very strong market, so 2.6 months of inventory. 2017, foreign buyer tax, camp up to 4.7. Then 2018, it drop back off, the market was ok. But it exploded to 9.8 months of inventory in 2019.
Balanced market 4-6 months of inventory, so we are in a full buyer’s market now. But what’s going on with the prices?
2015 you are in $641. 2016 we went to $775, up by 20%, incredible number. 2017, even though the sales were down a little bit, but look what happened, the prices went up by 15.6%, $886.
2018 up again 17.9%, over the million. And January of this year to January of last year we off by 3.5%.
Now the prices are started to weaken. The first time we see that over the last 5 years.
And here is the months of Inventory.
The board has 9.8, but look into detached, it is 14.7 – it is full buyer’s market.
There is no question detached prices are going to be weakening fairy substantially. Apartments 7.4, townhouses 8.4.
So we moved into the buyer’s market in all of the segments.
Lets quickly look into the prices.
The board average is a million, apartment $1,4, apartments you can see $658 and townhouses are sitting around $800.
I want to talk a little bit about what’s I suspect is going to happen for the rest of the year. I am a little bit hopeful actually, because I am not suspecting we gonna have another interest rates increases. There is a talk right now about adjusting or changing stress test. It’s just a talk, nothing might come out of it, but maybe it will. But everything else is strong, if you look at unemployment, inflation. All of the numbers are strong. All that’s happen because of the rates increases, foreign buyers tax, stress testing, new rules implementation, increasing foreign buyers tax to 20%, changing of the government – you name it.