The Burnaby real estate market is still red hot, but things are definitely slowing down locally and across the country.
Sanity appears to be returning after a wild start to the spring.
The number of homes sold in April fell by 12.5 per cent compared with the all-time record high set in March, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday.
The association said 60,967 homes sold across the country last month, down from 69,702 in March, while close to 85 per cent of all local markets, including almost all of B.C. and Ontario, saw sales declines.
However, sales in April were still a record for the month and up 256 per cent compared with a year ago, when the onset of COVID-19 kept people out of the market.
When it comes to Burnaby, the city saw 337 detached houses listed in April, 183 attached listed and 491 apartment listings.
The REGBV says 160 detached dwellings sold in Burnaby in April, while attached housing recorded 124 sales. There were also 371 apartment listings bought.
“The multiple-offer madness we saw previously has been replaced with something that’s still pretty brisk,” a Burnaby real estate agent told me.
Some listings were getting 40-50 offers, but now it’s like five or six, which is still a lot.
The sales came as the number of newly listed homes fell to 81,124 in April, a decrease of 5.4 per cent from 85,779 in March.
The national average home price was a little under $696,000 in April, up 41.9 per cent from last year when the average price was $490,082.
Excluding Greater Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, the national average price is more than $144,000 lower, CREA said.
The average price amounted to $1,090,992 in the GTA and $1,211,223 in Greater Vancouver.
Even though interest and sales in many markets remain high, Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic was seeing signs of "buyer fatigue."
Mortgage pre-approvals being at record-low rates, the Bank of Canada's "more hawkish tilt" on interest rates and prolonged stay-at-home orders in Ontario have caused momentum in the market to fade, he said in a note to investors.
"There might finally be some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel even though (COVID-19) cases were still high in April," he said.
- With additional reporting by the Canadian Press
