April 05, 2024
Market & Mortgage Trends, Rental Regulations, Pre-Offer Period
As we enter the Spring housing market, sellers are returning, offering buyers more options. Regionally, sales dropped by 4.7% from March 2023, well below the 10-year seasonal average by 31%. Although sales activity isn't as robust as last year, the...
March 07, 2024
Single-Family Landrush, Rate Hold, Public Land Use, T3 Return
Housing inventory is on the rise in Greater Vancouver with new listings up 31% compared to last February. Sales in the region totalled 2,070, representing a 13.5% increase—45% over January 2024 albeit 23.3% below the 10-year seasonal average. Across all...
February 23, 2024
New Flipping Tax and Property Transfer Tax Exemption
New housing-related measures were unveiled in the provincial government’s Budget 2024, notably the BC Home Flipping Tax and adjustments to Property Transfer Tax exemptions. While recognizing the provincial government's commitment to enhancing housing attainability, the introduction of another "flipping tax"...
February 06, 2024
Front-Running, U-Haul Migration, Foreign Buyers, Student Cap, Hotel Comeback
The housing market is off to a strong start—the prevailing consensus being that buyers are front-running the expectation of lower interest rates, even though it remains speculative at this point. While the key overnight rate was held at 5%, the...
January 08, 2024
2024 Outlook
After a challenging 2023 for the real estate market, total sales reached 26,249, concluding 23% below the 10-year average. Despite the highest mortgage rates in over a decade, the Metro Vancouver housing market surpassed expectations with a 5%+ increase in...
December 07, 2023
November 2023 Market Update
As the year comes to a close, the Metro Vancouver real estate market sits in balanced territory at 6 months of supply. The total number of properties currently listed for sale is 13.5% above last year, and 3.7% above the...
November 28, 2023
New Short-Term Rental Regulations in BC
Effective May 1, 2024, the Province of British Columbia has new short-term rental rules. Under the new rules, short-term rental platforms will be required to share information about short-term listings with the Province, which they can then share with local...
November 21, 2023
502-1771 Nelson Street For Sale
[West End, Vancouver] Listed at $889,900 with eXp Realty. View the listing for 502-1771 Nelson Street. Nelson Court is located in Vancouver's coveted West End—this is the first time the unit is on the market since it was built in...
October 05, 2023
Market Update, New Legislation, eXp Exclusives, Opendoor
New listings are finally outpacing sales, as price gains relent in Metro Vancouver to begin the typically slower fall season. With two more interest rate announcements for the year on October 25th and December 6th, the longer mortgage rates stay...
April 06, 2023
Homes for People
Metro Vancouver saw renewed price growth in March 2023 with modest increases at +2.7% for detached, +0.7% for apartments, and +1.7% for townhomes. Annual growth isn't quite reflected due to strong base effects from March 2022. New listings remained 22%...
March 23, 2023
Canada Hits Population Milestone
Despite concerns following the banking turmoil that higher borrowing rates could make matters worse, the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by a quarter point on Wednesday. Any talk of rate increases has now turned to talk about rate...
March 09, 2023
ChatGPT for Real Estate
The long-anticipated ChatGPT and Whisper APIs were released on March 1, 2023, giving developers access to cutting-edge language and speech-to-text capabilities: “"Through a series of system-wide optimizations, we’ve achieved 90% cost reduction for ChatGPT since December; we’re now passing through...
February 23, 2023
Positioning Year
For the first time, the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP) published data on investors and the residential properties they owned in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia for 2020. The proportion of investors in British Columbia came...
January 29, 2023
2030 BARCLAY at Stanley Park
Introducing 2030 BARCLAY at Stanley Park—by renowned Canadian architect Richard Henriquez and interiors by Alda Pereira Design. I’ve always had a special connection to the West End, having lived and invested there for over 12 years. Back in the day...
January 26, 2023
Pause and Reflect
The Bank of Canada made its first rate hike of the year, increasing its key policy interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.5%, sending the prime rate to 6.70%—the highest since March 2001. Adjustable-rate mortgage payments will jump about...
January 19, 2023
Year of the Rabbit
Despite the plethora of new regulatory policies focused on the demand side of the transaction, buyer activity has been picking up over the last couple of weeks. Homes that have been sitting on the market are suddenly going into multiple...
January 09, 2023
Housing Market 2023
2023 is the Year of the Rabbit symbolizing peace and prosperity, while 2022 was all about the three ‘i’s—inflation, interest rates, and inventory constraints. Never in history has there been a rate move like we saw on a percentage basis,...
December 01, 2022
Investing in Different Asset Classes
With the passing of Bill 44, there are officially no more rental restrictions for any strata building in British Columbia. Short-term rental bylaws that prohibit services like Airbnb are however still in effect. Only age restriction bylaws of 55+ are...
November 17, 2022
Housing Correction Hits Canadian PropTech
Zonda Urban, a real estate analytics company, reported that new home sales (i.e. pre-sales) were down 72% on a year-over-year basis. The decrease in sales is partially explained by a decrease in project launches. Langley/Cloverdale sub-markets had the highest number...
November 10, 2022
Excessive Exuberance
As covered in last week's market update, the sales slump continues as we head into the winter months, with a decline of 45% in Greater Vancouver. Sales are also flat in the Fraser Valley where only 901 properties exchanged hands—a...