“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.”
— Sam Keen
After a hot Spring and a damp June and early July we are ready to celebrate the arrival of sunshine and heat. A beautiful summer day in Vancouver is perfect. We recognize why so many people from all over the world want to come here to live or spend quality holiday time. The real estate news is the same old, same old. Prices are up, volume is up slightly in June. Real estate news gets lots of play in the local media.
May was it’s beautiful self in terms of weather and real estate. All is well in the rear view mirror. Sales were up and so were prices.
Government on every level is trying to obfuscate the problem and kick the can down the road with rules about ‘shadow flipping’.
“The world’s favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.”
— Edwin Way Teale
Couldn’t resist this total encapsulation of our real estate market by Thomas Davidoff, director of the Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate at the UBC Sauder School of Business as published in the Vancouver Sun: “Imagine a candidate for office saying “I promise to meddle in real estate markets and set taxes to hurt workers, businesses, and the environment.”
In March the Metro Vancouver real estate market reported 5,000 sales, the first time it has hit that number.
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVIII
Hope you caught the new mantra “drive till you can afford it”. Garry Marr of the National Post commented on the strategy of house buyers in Vancouver and Toronto. It is so expensive in both cities that those who want the Canadian dream of a detached home are looking farther afield. The President of the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors says that buyers are driving to their affordable mortgage. They stop when they say “I can afford to live here”.
In February the Metro Vancouver real estate market continued to rack up records on numbers of sales and rising prices.
There has been lots in the news lately of how some in our profession have not been treating the public properly.
There is a lot of distress in the huge majority of honest ethical professional members of the real estate community.
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
Love is around us in February. It’s a good reminder of how to treat people and how we wish to be treated in return. There’s been lots in the news lately of how some in our profession have not been treating the public properly. Although it is not PC to say so, it seems clear that it is a small group whose business practices were learned in another culture and whose clients don’t expect anything better because they’re gaming the system too.
Local sellers are nervous about listing their homes because there is nothing available to purchase if they want to move up or downsize.
“My interest is in the future because I am hoping to spend the rest of my life there.”
— Charles Kettering
Hope that 2016 is looking good for you. We’ve been following CNBC stock and financial news so have had lots of confusion on how the New Year is looking to us. Hence the delay in checking in with the newsletter. The real estate action in Vancouver in December 2015 was more of the same…higher prices, bidding wars, lack of inventory.
The Vancouver real estate market is still surging. As investments in energy and commodities go off the rails there is an even stronger demand for both residential and commercial properties in Metro Vancouver.
Vancouver is still on its upward trajectory in sale prices and plunging to Earth on the reality of how little there is to buy with many offers.
Same old. Sales are up 32.9% above 10-year sales average for September, listings are at 9 year low and multiple offers are occurring.