The Tri-City housing market was red hot in the spring and late winter but is showing signs it has cooled down over the summer, according to the most recent data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).
The total number of transactions for detached homes, attached homes and apartments for Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody dropped 29% over the summer, falling from 501 in July to 351 in August.
The Tri-City numbers follow what is being seen in the rest of the region, where demand has fallen from its record-breaking pace seen last spring.
The number of residential property sales in August 2016 fell 26% from the 3,362 in August of 2015 and a 22.8% decline from the previous month’s sales.
But the summer stats are consistent with what the region has recorded in past years.
“The record-breaking sales we saw earlier this year were replaced by more historically normal activity throughout July and August,” said REBGV president Dan Morrison. “Sales have been trending downward in Metro Vancouver for a few months.”
Price declines have also showed up in the data, with the median selling price in Coquitlam for a detached home dropping from $1,250,000 in July to $1,108,750 in August (down 11.3%), while attached properties saw an 8.5% ($685,019 to $627,500) decrease in median price while apartments saw a 5.6% drop (from $411,250 to $388,000).
Similar declines were seen in PoCo, where the median selling price for a single-family detached home fell from $884,000 to $848,000 (down 4.1%) and the median apartment selling price fell from $316,644 to $309,900 (down 2.1%). Median selling prices for attached homes were not included in the data because the area had fewer than 20 transactions.
In Port Moody, only the apartment category had enough transactions for the REBGV to post the median selling price, which increased from $435,000 to $489,500, a 12.5% hike.
Morrison said that while the numbers have been trending downward for a few months, the provincial government’s recent 15% tax on new foreign home buyers is adding to the market pressure.
“The new foreign buyer tax appears to have added to this trend by reducing foreign buyer activity and causing some uncertainty amongst local home buyers and sellers,” Morrison said. “It’ll take some months before we can really understand the impact of the new tax. We’ll be interested to see the government’s next round of foreign buyer data.”
Despite the drop in the number of transactions, the real estate board said Metro Vancouver was still considered a “seller’s market,” with a sales-to-active listings ratio of 29.3%.
@gmckennaTC
