Week 29 – Vancouver Real Estate Week in Review (July 12th – July 18th, 2020)

Week 29 – Market Update
Overview

The “spring” market continues so far this summer in Vancouver,.

Overall, listings rose in just about every category across the city this past week. New listings continued to come onto the market as sellers confidence has increased in recent weeks…but the pace of new listings slowed somewhat over the previous week.

Meanwhile, sales numbers remained at the higher levels we saw in the last couple of weeks.

At this point, I think it’s safe to put any concerns about the CMHC lending rule changes behind us. This makes two consecutive weeks of solid sales number AFTER these rules came into effect.

Vancouver West (Westside)

The Westside remains the geographic division that is seeing a slower recovery.

In particular, houses on the westside are not seeing the market surge seen in East Vancouver. Listings are increasing as elsewhere in the city, but sales have not yet recovered to pre-COVID levels (albeit sales were faster this past week as DOM dropped and some high-priced sales drove up the average sales price).

Both Apartments and Townhouses had a better week this past week. While inventory levels rose, they did so moderately. Sales were close to pre-COVID numbers and DOM for those sales continued to stay low (as with houses, there were some high-priced condo sales that drove up the average sales price for apartments this past week).

East Vancouver (Eastside)

Once again, East Vancouver is demonstrating a faster recovery in the real estate market than the rest of the city.

Houses in particular are seeing a brisk trade. Inventory levels have remained relatively flat for the last month (and dropped slightly this past week). Meanwhile Sales numbers are flirting with pre-COVID levels (the dropped slightly week-to-week).

Of note, 14 of this week’s 33 sales were in competition. That’s just over 42%…showing just how in demand houses in East Vancouver are at the moment.

Apartments in East Vancouver also had a good week, with sales close to pre-COVID levels. Townhouses were a little weaker, seeing a slight dip in sales numbers but both saw only slight increases in active listings.

Downtown Vancouver

Similar to the Westside, Downtown Vancouver’s recovery is happening at a slower pace than East Vancouver.

The last three weeks have seen a pretty rapid increase in active listings for the area. While sales numbers have rebounded from the mid-April lows, they’ve stalled over the last month.

The result is that we aren’t seeing many sales over asking price, and DOM is hovering at a month. Interestingly, this last week did witness some higher-priced sales of apartments that drove up the average sale price

Summary

This past week was one of solid activity. Both for new listings and sales in just about every part of Vancouver.

While we are mostly seeing a return to pre-COVID levels, there are exceptions. Most notably, Westside houses and Downtown apartments are struggling to recover quickly.