Week 39 – Market Update

The fall market appears to be in full swing.

We set records for 2020 on all fronts (New Listings, Total Active Listings as well as Sales). It’s a positive sign to see this level of activity indicating an immense amount of confidence in the Vancouver real estate market by both sellers as well as buyers.

Sales are outpacing new listings coming on to the market. The result is that we are (overall) getting pushed toward a seller’s market as indicated by our Months of Supply hitting a post-COVID 2020 low of 4.18.

More than ever, not all micro-markets in Vancouver are behaving in unison. The hottest market is the Detached (house) market on both the East and Westside. The same holds true for Townhouses/Duplexes on both sides of the city.

Condos are another story. While they are holding steady in East Vancouver and the Westside, the downtown market is the weakest of all the micro-markets…staying firmly in buyer’s market territory.

If you are...

Week 38 – Market Update
Overview

The Vancouver real estate market saw higher activity levels continue in Week 38 (September 13th – September 19th, 2020). We had one quieter week for sales in the previous week, but that did not become a trend.

In fact, sales numbers hovered just below the highs for the year hitting 219 (previous week was 188). Meanwhile, overall listing numbers continue to grow. 467 new listings bumped up the overall listing count to a high of 4130 for 2020.

You can see by that blue line in the chart above, that the trend for the Months of Inventory has been lower over the last couple of months (generally, from the top left to the bottom right)…indicating an increasing seller’s market and a market that is getting stronger.

Diving into the specific micro-markets, given the overall trend it’s not surprising to see most markets performing very well. The strongest markets appear to be East Vancouver houses and townhouses and Westside townhouses...

Summary

We have come a very long way since April.

This August saw one of the strongest performances for the month in the last 5 years. Normally, August is one of the quietest months of the summer as everyone packs in their final summer holidays and turns their attention to the beginning of the school year. That was not the case this year.

For the City of Vancouver, sales hit 819 which was up only slightly over last month (+().24%) but a massive increase over a year ago (+24.66%). This was approximately 10% over the 10-year-average for sales in the month of August.

Meanwhile, Total Active Listings edged lower (-3.5% from last month and -4.1% from last year). The 3,637 listings was about dead even for the 10-year-average which stands at 3632.

This is particularly noteworthy given that we had a slower start to the month (a trend that I pointed out in my regular weekly market update) . The first two weeks of August actually saw a bit of a dip in activity…something that would have been...

Week 36 – Market Update
Overview

It was yet another busy week for Vancouver real estate.

The typical pattern we usually see leading up to the Labour Day long weekend is one of subdued activity. In this unusual year, that typical pattern has been thrown out the window.

The last three weeks have been particularly strong. We set highs for the year LAST week for Sales (227) as well as Total Active Listings (3883). This dropped ever so slightly to 223 and 3863 in Week 36 (the week ending September 5th, 2020).

The ever so important Months of Inventory reached a pandemic low of just 4.28 last week but rose slightly this week to 4.33…overall still in Seller’s Market territory.

In terms of sub-markets, East Van houses and condos both hit highs for the years in regard to sales (38 and 41 respectively)…but all sub-markets had above-average levels of activity this past week.

I expect that we will see a greater number of listings coming onto the market in the coming weeks…as...