Metro Vancouver home prices rise in July: REBGV
Posted August 2, 2023 2:53 pm.
Last Updated August 2, 2023 2:55 pm.
Home prices in Metro Vancouver rose once again in July as the region continues to see low levels of housing supply.
According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), the average price for a home in the region is $1.2 million. A detached home is priced at just over $2 million on average, apartments are going for an average of $771,600, and townhomes are selling for more than $1 million.
These prices are all between 0.5 per cent to 2.6 per cent higher than the same time last year, REBGV says.
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The board says 2,455 homes sold last month, marking a nearly-29 per cent increase from the previous year. But the board points out that the figure is still 15 per cent lower than the 10-year seasonal average of more than 2,900.
Andrew Lis, the board’s economics director, says despite home sales being lower than the decade average, they’re still up 30 per cent year-over-year.
“Looking under the hood of these figures, it’s easy to see why sales are posting such a large year-over-year percentage increase. Last July marked the point when the Bank of Canada announced their ‘super-sized’ increase to the policy rate of one full per cent, catching buyers and sellers off guard, and putting a chill on market activity at that time,” he said in a news release.
As for listings, the board reports 4,649 homes were put up for sale in the region last month, marking a 17 per cent increase from the same time last year. In total, the organization says there are 10,301 homes listed, down four per cent from this time in 2022.
Breaking those numbers down, 16.5 per cent of listings are for detached homes, 32 per cent are townhomes, and 30.6 per cent are apartments.
“What’s interesting to see in the current market environment is that, while the Bank of Canada rate hike this July was only a quarter of a per cent, mortgage rates are now at the highest levels we’ve seen in Canada in over ten years,” Lis said.
“Yet despite borrowing costs being even higher than last July, sales activity surpassed the levels we saw last year, which I think says a lot about the strength of demand in our market and buyers’ ability to adapt to and qualify for higher borrowing costs.”
