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The Greater Vancouver housing market showed a balanced market in January 2011 with a small number of hot spots with increased buyer demand. Furthermore, the number of listings as well as the number of properties sold over January 2011 were higher than the 10-year average. As Jake Moldowan, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, stressed: despite the market being in a good, balanced position in January 2011, the situation may vary greatly from region to region.

According to the statistics released monthly by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, residential housing in the Greater Vancouver area sold less in January 2011 than in December 2010, reaching 1,819 sales on the Multiple Listing Service, which represents a 4.2 per cent decline compared to the December 2010 number of 1,899 sales.

Sales also moderated in a year-over-year comparison, with a drop by 5.4 per cent from 1,923 sales recorded in January 2010. The good news is that the January 2011 sales were still 138.7 per cent stronger than the 762 home sales recorded two years earlier during the crisis. The number of home sales slightly surpassed the 10-year average of 1,790 homes sold.

The total number of new listings on the Multiple Listing Service was 4,801 for all property types in the Greater Vancouver area in January 2011. This shows a 6.7 per cent fall year-over-year from the January 2010 number of 5,147. Nevertheless, it was a significant rise compared to the previous month, as only 1,699 listings were added in December 2010. 10,438 residential properties were listed in the Multiple Listing Service in January 2011 in the Greater Vancouver region, going up by 5.8 per cent from the last month of 2010 and growing by 2.2 per cent in a year-over-year comparison.

There were 793 detached houses sold in January 2011, which is up 12.5 per cent from the year before and a 172.6 per cent jump from January 2009. In January 2011, the benchmark price went up to $810,045, which is a 2.7 per cent rise from January 2010. Apartments sold much worse in January 2011 than the year before, with their sales plummeting by 20.8 per cent from 891 sales recorded in January 2010 to the 713 apartments sold in January 2011.

Two years prior to January 2011, only 391 apartment transactions took place in Greater Vancouver, which means that the sales increased by 97.5 per cent in two year’s time. The benchmark price for an apartment was 1.4 per cent higher than the year before. Finally, attached properties saw a minor decline by 4.3 per cent in sales in January 2011 (313 properties sold) compared to January 2010 (327 properties sold). However, the attached housing sales numbers for January 2011 went up by 187.2 per cent compared to January 2009, when only 109 attached homes found a new owner. A typical attached unit sold for $495,140 in January 2011, a 2.6 per cent rise from January 2010.