Vancouver’s December home sales down 52% from year ago: B.C. real estate board

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) says home sales and prices continued their fall in December, dropping by 52 per cent and three per cent respectively from a year ago.

REBGV says last month’s sales totalled 1,295, about 20 per cent lower than they were in November and 38 per cent below the 10-year December sales average.

The figures contribute to the 28,903 sales made over 2022, 34 per cent lower than 2021’s total and seven per cent below 2020’s.

The board attributed the decreases to the market experiencing “a year of caution” fueled by rising borrowing costs and an ongoing battle with inflation.

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It says the composite benchmark price now sits at $1,114,300, a three per cent decrease from December 2021 and a 1.5 per cent decrease, when compared with November 2022.

Speaking to CityNews, Andrew Lis, the board’s director of economics and data analytics, says we need to keep in mind that sales were hot early on during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s certainly starting to favour buyers a little bit more, but at the same time if you look around at the market, if you’re shopping for something that is in any of the affordability, constrained price brackets, I think you’ll find that it’s still pretty slim pickings out there,” he said.

Lis says unless there’s a buildup of listings, he doesn’t see any significant price drops, and as long as prices remain elevated, buying power is eroded.

“Even if people start listing, if we have more sales than we have people listing, we’re still going to remain in a very low inventory situation,” he explained. “So, it’s really going to be that balance of sales relative to new stuff coming to market that we’ll be watching, really closely.”

Lis says he’ll be watching prices this year to see if buyers and sellers have adjusted to higher borrowing costs and will wade into the market at last.

“Closing out 2022, the data shows that the Bank of Canada’s decisions to increase the policy rate at seven of the eight interest rate announcement dates in 2022, has translated into downward pressure on home sale activity and, to a lesser extent, home prices in Metro Vancouver,” Lis said.