April 15 Market Update
Last Monday I had a quick look at the luxury end of the market, which is a bit of a bellweather but not that directly relevant to most prospective buyers in the near term. Probably one of the most popular segments amongst house hunters here are the core areas up to about $850,000 (that’s up to about the 40% percentile of houses in that area). Often I hear from buyers that are monitoring that segment up to $700-$750k but could add another $100k with a suite.
As you can see, we are roughly back to 2015/14 market conditions in that segment which means the median property is taking just over 2 weeks to sell for about 3% under original asking price but about the same over assessment. Not dead slow, and a little more active than the average for the entire market (lower end almost always is) but a middling activity level compared to what is typical for April. If we slice the market even lower (say up to $650k), it’s more active because there just isn’t all that much available in that range in the core. Generally to get something of decent quality for that price you still have to go further out the west shore.
So no panic amongst sellers in that segment where the loss of Vancouver buyers hasn’t been felt as much. Out of town and out of country buyers tended to go for higher end properties, which means local buyers (which have dropped less year over year) are still the dominant driver here. However the slowing trend looks to be continuing mostly due to increasing inventory, so I suspect just like last fall we’ll start to see some more urgency amongst those that didn’t manage to sell in these spring months. As I’ve said before, it’s nice as a buyer to have some breathing room where the market is not getting away you from you while you find the right place.
Also weekly sales courtesy of the VREB:
| April 2019 |
Apr
2018
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 | Wk 4 | ||
| Sales | 136 | 310 | 774 | ||
| New Listings | 346 | 681 | 1291 | ||
| Active Listings | 2517 | 2598 | 2002 | ||
| Sales to New Listings | 40% | 46% | 60% | ||
| Sales Projection | — | 735 | |||
| Months of Inventory | 2.6 | ||||
Sales so far are down some 9% from April last year, but last week was pretty close so I wouldn’t be surprised if the month ended down just a few percent. Working against us is the Easter weekend coming up which will cause a temporary dip in sales.
If sales end up at the projected 735, that would be a far cry from the nearly 1300 sales we saw three years ago, but still some 20% higher than a truly slow year when we would expect only around 600. Inventory continues to build up at a very steady pace, currently at 35% higher than this time a year ago.
Let’s get together and protest on July 1, we need the government to stop this madness!
1 house per family! Houses are homes not for speculation! This is destroying dreams and our economy!
Who wants to join me?
New post investigating the CBC article from earlier today: https://househuntvictoria.ca/2019/04/16/immigration-and-home-ownership/
dont get confused.. statistics says sales are down, statics says price growth is flattening and decreasing from the 20+% yoy growth …. all bears and bulls will get their prediction right if you wait long enough.. i dont doubt that price will eventually rise … but blindly jumping in due to some one else’s grand wisdom is like jumping in to a bush fire .. the fire will eventually die and new growth will regrow.. but why get burned when it is hot ?
why brand your self with bear and bull .. be an opportunist investor … if there is a home that is worth the value .. buy right away .. unlike GWAC .. we dont have deep pockets ,… choose wisely in what you buy for the next ten years .. many people dont have the luxury of holding onto second homes or investment properties .. for those who does and can weather the storm … go ahead and invest to the hearts content … otherwise , crunch those numbers and see if it makes sense
Funny, Victoria RE got mentioned in Zerohedge this evening…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/meet-social-media-accounts-gleefully-documenting-vancouvers-housing-collapse
When affordability returns to the lower end of the cyclical range and cap rates improve. But we have a PR so have the luxury of this being entirely optional so I am not concerned if that doesn’t materialize.
If I was shopping for a PR, I would start paying very close attention for deals now, or at least in the slower season.
Sad, but I guess just Alberta returning to form after a one term anomaly.
Jason Kenney is a fantastic reminder of everything I detested about Alberta when I lived there. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots to love in Alberta too.
Pretty hard to starve a seaport (with an existing oil terminal) of oil. If Alberta stopped selling BC oil we’d get it from elsewhere – at a higher price . Meanwhile it would be the ultimate own goal for Alberta as it would drive their realized prices even lower.
That’s not helping them much, is it? I’m talking global markets, especially Uncle Sam.
Vancouver refinery uses Alberta oil and the airport could not function without the gas from Alberta.
No one wants Alberta oil, unfortunately. Jason isn’t going to change that. He just might make gas in BC a tad more expensive, though. Who says politics is boring?
Good news in Alberta. Fun times ahead.
Sold I MTB so I have great calf muscles. Maybe when I hit your door I can show you
Stultus I accept your award. Thanks you I am so excited.
I provide actual statistic I guess that is what is confusing you.
Almost 10 years on here. Been a blast.
GWAC is now crowned king of bull .. for BS
I blame it on the bad kids at the back of the class.
This conversation took a strange turn while I wasn’t paying attention.
Sorry gwac, I’ll need pics of your calf muscles, for verification purposes only, of course.
Sold out that’s me. Door to door after work.
Your new so you need to ask Leo why I am here. He figured very fast. 🙂
If you hawk-adjusted those numbers, you’d likely find that total “ex-Hawk” forum posts are up this year.
Oops. Sorry for the double post. I literally lost the thread.
@LF (If I can call you that)
If I were single, and you had a dog and a hot bicycle, sparks might have flown!
Haha! 😛
Indeed. Mrs. Fool is awesome. You don’t take much of anything I say seriously, so why would you make an exception now? I’m thinking I might need to post the graph.
@gwac
perhaps you missed my post that explained I already own all the home I need. I’ve built’em, bought’em, sold’em, and renovated them. Now, I just get to enjoy my view and troll anonymous “experts” online. Do you proselytize on doorsteps, randomly ringing doorbells, telling bewildered strangers to “repent, buy, or be condemned to eternal damnation”? Cuz that’s kinda how you come across.
@LF
Sorry to have left you hanging, I was walking the dog. If I was single, and you also had a nice bicycle, sparks might fly!
If you are a potential Victoria detached home buyer, my advice would be to do nothing (until June 21/19) until the Vancouver spring selling season is over. At that point in time, IMO, there is going to be fundamental realization in that City that sellers must dramatically lower their asking prices to fit in with the current market conditions (I say this because inventory is building and they are at 33 year lows in sales).
When the reality sets in, in big brother Vancouver, all you have to do is wait 6 months for the “lag effect’ to roll into Victoria. So by about Dec 21/19, you will start to see marked changes in Victoria asking prices. Victoria prices are already coming down, albeit slowly. The high was last Sept 2018 when the Greater Victoria benchmark detached house price was $768K. Now (as of March 31, 2019) the benchmark has dropped to $741K. That’s a savings of $27K from the Sept 2018 high, for doing just one thing: waiting.
In 2016, at the height of the stupidity of the Vancouver RE market, an average detached house was selling for about $1.8 million. Subtract 4% from that high, and you’ve saved $72,000. That’s nothing to laugh at gwac. That represents a full year of hard work for many people.
But the better news is if you are willing to wait longer (maybe 6 months to a year, maybe 1.5 years), you will save alot more money. I believe that you can now apply a simple, logical formula to the Victoria detached house market which is this: for each month you are willing to wait to make a purchase (from now until the next 2 years), you will be rewarded with 1% off the current benchmark purchase price. That’s a savings of about $7,410 per month. All you have to do is wait and save.
That’s something I can sink my teeth into gwac. Because LF is right. There is no point in taking a picture of a roller coaster to describe anything. You have to acknowledge that it’s moving and then figure out where you are at on the ride.
@guest_58657
You’re telling me that you can time the market so perfectly that you would never ‘overpay’ by 20%? Timing markets in for both stocks and real estate doesn’t work and this concept is backed by tons of data. Over the long term, those who buy and hold usually come out on top. Again, I like to ask the bears at what median price are they willing to buy a house in Victoria?
Glad you paid 18-25% more than you had to in one of Canada’s most expensive markets? Well it’s your dime.
Sure LF whatever rocks your boat. Since traffic is down maybe making this a matchmaking site will get things up again. BTW I thought you had a partner???
gwac
I hope he found some place so perfect he had to buy it regardless of market conditions. I mean, he had all that money from his 500% investment returns right?
All joking aside, I do hope it’s a case of something right worked out for him (rather than capitulating). Crazy that he disappears right before the market finally appears to be tipping in favour of buyers.
She said she’s queen of the bears. So does that mean my title still stands? If I am still king and she is queen…then I guess I need to ask:
Soldout, are you married? I can cook a few things, and fix just about anything computer or mechanical. Unless I break it of course, which means I didn’t (and can’t) fix it. Oh and no dowry required.
Mind you, I do rent someone else’s castle for my lodgings, but perhaps you’ll overlook that.
I think he bought…and is now Patrick….lol
gwac
So is that the running theory on Hawk? Maybe he just got tired of having to repeat himself to no avail (did he convert any bulls?) and now he’s just chilling out on the balcony of his OB Beach Hotel suite with a nice scotch in hand.
When I was out sailing in OB I took a good look up there, hoping to spot him ;). In all honesty I did think of him, obviously he wasn’t on a balcony there.
So we are analyzing pent up demand by the traffic on this blog. Wow that is a leap.
I officially take the king of the Bears away from LF who got it from Hawk who got it from info. Sold out you are now crowned king of the bears. Enjoy the title. Nothing really comes with it other than disappearing one day with your tail between your legs as you gave up and bought a house.
Even the guy who started this blog gave up and bought and handed the keys to someone else.
Even Just Jack after changing his name a few times gave up and posts rarely.
ha .. the high end goes does not affect the rest of the market? .. If I can buy a luxury home for 1.5 mil… why would I buy a tear down at 1.4 mil? I would rather buy that LYNN valley home for 750k than the fixer uppers popping up around town .. but that is just me coming from a bigger city with lots of land to go around .. unlike Victoria indicated by GWAC
Viola P
Also, it’s presumably worth more and easier to liquidate (if it came to that). Easier to sell a nice house in any market.
I’m not super happy with how much money we’ve thrown towards an old house, but that seems to be the way it goes in Victoria. If we were in the interior we would have just bought a new build I think (the economics of renovating up there are different). We like our area and weren’t willing to move further out to have something newer. Any step up in neighbourhood would have put us in another home that needs updates as we surely couldn’t afford up-to-date homes in the areas we like.
Speaking of which, we’ve dumped a silly amount into this house as have a few of our neighbours.. so that’s a few less fixer uppers available to new buyers. How does that affect the market? Are there enough older people who have let their places fall into fixer-upper condition to balance out the number of people fixing up stuff?
Still plenty of fixer-uppers in Saanich, but it seems to be rarer and rarer in OB.
Are people who bought GH fixer-uppers at nosebleed prices dumping 100K+ into their places or are they living with their 70s aesthetic? Of course that’s a false dichotomy, I’m assuming the reality is fix a few things at a time to make it more livable.
Leo has said that site traffic is down 5% this year, after posting two years of successive 25% increases. That doesn’t sound like pent up demand, more like people are losing interest in the whole real estate train wreck. I’m trying to remember a time when we all talked about something else. If it weren’t for Trump and real estate, online advertising would be dying a slow death.
@Sold Out
Yea, this will be interesting to watch. If we start seeing more properties priced like that, things will get very interesting very fast.
Corrected:
“The sharp erosion of affordability caused by excessive house prices is now being exacerbated by needing to qualify at borrowing rates that still are below nominal levels. Pent-up supply is becoming an increasing issue.”
Yes. That’s exactly how a housing cycle is supposed to work.
Both are lagging, not leading. Vancouver has been demonstrating that to pretty much anyone who’s paying a modicum of attention.
Aside from the 4% number you’re quoting, this is analogous to taking a still picture of a roller coaster car just past the crest of the track, saying – look, it’s hardly moved! Keep watching my photo, because it’s not going to move from there! But that coaster is in motion, and that is downwards. It’s not like the market will drop 20% across the board, overnight. In fact, it’s virtually impossible, because housing becomes illiquid when the market turns. Just wait until the panic really sets in – because right now, it doesn’t look like Spring is coming for BC RE.
Downward pressure on prices occurs when the SAL ratio drops below about 12-14% for an extended period (~ 3 months or more). Sales volumes in Van have been declining in most segments for quite a while now, with demand approaching levels not seen in about 33 years.
In short, what is going on there is already leading to lower prices, but RE moves very slowly. Saying, “let’s see April’s crash numbers” or similar needling comments is a bit hare-brained, IMO and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding on how these markets work.
“We finished our renovation and have decided to stay put. House is much nicer now that we are using all the sqft (rather than living primarily on the main floor).”
Ditto. Our place is tiny but now really nice thanks to the renos. Plus I like how fast it is to clean. Plus I like how low the heating bills are. Plus the market is still weird out there. I suspect it will go down only a little and in a year we will re-evaluate.
“Markets go up and down. Real estate cycles come and go. Victoria is an exceptional little city and demand will never full dry up. Sure, we might get a correction of 15-20% but if you hold on for at least 10 years, you’ll be glad you did. Please please bears refute my statements and give us some numbers and predictions.”
Agree 100%. Except that I don’t think we will get into the double digits with a correction. But even if we do, it will recover again.
@ gwac
Didn’t you say something about the money laundering issue not being a big deal as well that we’d all forget about 😉
Victoria is not Vancouver, but it is affected by Vancouver’s path, just like the entire island is.
Hey GWAC, sales fell in Vancouver 2015/2016/2017 yoy while prices climbed, too.
https://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2017/01/04/vancouver-real-estate-board-to-release-2016-home-sales-figures-later-today.html
https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/2017-home-sales-in-vancouver-more-normal-but-prices-up-says-real-estate-board
We finished our renovation and have decided to stay put. House is much nicer now that we are using all the sqft (rather than living primarily on the main floor).
Where’d Hawk go? Place isn’t the same without him. Who has taken over posting “the graph”?
Hey sold out / chomp on this non price adjusted numbers and let me know about our unicorn Victoria market, Lesson 1 unless you are going back to 1980-82. Not a lot of declines.
Lesson number 2 less sales does not mean lower prices. Check the last 2 years.
https://www.vreb.org/media/attachments/view/doc/ye782018/pdf/Annual%20Summary%20of%20Single%20Family%20Sales%20from%201978
Does the anti-bear argument always have to be so hyperbolic? No one is saying that demand will go to zero.
You’ve been here long enough to know the differences between these and to not conflate them.
@VicInvestor1983(birth year?)
Maybe prices don’t drop or climb for the next 3-5 years, as has previously happened in this very special unicorn market. If wage gains compound annually during that time period, wouldn’t that result in improved affordability? Some of us are just cheap, and won’t pay a dollar more than is strictly necessary. Some of us may also make a living in the FIRE fields, and indulge in wishful thinking.
So according to that Greater Vancouver is down 4%. Not exactly the huge numbers everyone is cherry picking.
From the article
“The sharp erosion of affordability caused by the B20 stress test is now creating pent-up
demand, as many would-be home buyers are forced to wait on the sidelines,” added
Muir. “Unfortunately, new home construction is slowing as well, which will likely lead to
another housing supply crunch down the road.”
According to BCREA, the Victoria market seems to be following the Vancouver market fairly closely (albeit to lesser degree). Here are the figures:
http://www.bcrea.bc.ca/docs/news-2019/2019-03.pdf
Year over Year (March 2018 vs March 2019):
Vancouver prices dropped 3.9%, inventory increased 48.9%, sale dollar volume dropped 34.3%, sales dropped 31.6%
Victoria prices dropped 2.4%, inventory increased 49.6%, sale dollar volume dropped 10.1%, sales dropped 7.9%
This is basically a perfect reflection of the “lag effect” principle, which is: whatever happens in the big city, happens in the nearby smaller city, to a lesser extent, about 6 months later.
Go back to 2013-2015 and ask yourself: Did Victoria RE increase in value all by itself, or did it have something to do with the fact that nearby Vancouver RE was on fire and increasing at rates never before seen? Now that Vancouver is taking a hit, is it really difficult to put 2 + 2 together and conclude that Victoria not immune from the decline? The charts don’t seem to think so.
For those with $$$, this is the time to start looking for deals on investment properties or luxury on-sale.
I like the bears to come out of their sad caves and explain at what % drop they would buy a house in Victoria? Please enlighten us all with your market-timing knowledge and skills.
Markets go up and down. Real estate cycles come and go. Victoria is an exceptional little city and demand will never full dry up. Sure, we might get a correction of 15-20% but if you hold on for at least 10 years, you’ll be glad you did. Please please bears refute my statements and give us some numbers and predictions.
Lower sales do not always lead to lower prices…Unless you have a large group of seller who need to mover their properties. Economy is still doing ok. Jobs are not declining.
This slowdown is driven by government rules from both Victoria and Ottawa, Demand has not disappeared long term.
Lets see what April has instore. Victoria looks fine for April…
Top end is hardest hit for sure, but no doubt every sector is slowing. You don’t get 30 year low sales numbers because of a few luxury properties not selling. That is not speculation.
Leo it is not spreading anywhere like the top end. Those are march up to date numbers. Anything else is just speculation or wishful thinking on some.
The reality is that the slowdown in Vancouver high end is spreading. Where it ends up no one knows
Lets all deal in reality.
The losses in Vancouver are on the high end, Your average/median or HPI whatever you want to call it is is down 7.65% over 1 year up 20% over 5 and up 60% over 5%. That is reality so that barely covers to expense of selling a home for you speculators.
this is Victoria
Victoria $683,900 0.46 -0.32 -1.49 1.02 36.98 56.47
http://creastats.crea.ca/natl/
Enjoy the reality for a while all instead of the cherry picking over priced high end Vancouver homes.
used to be skill worker immigration oriented … now its investor immigration oriented .. i guess that is one resource we can still export in Canada… Canadian citizen ship
This is interesting. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/immigrants-wealth-statistics-canada-1.5100205
31% ownership rate for “recent” immigrants in 1999 to 79% in 2016? Does not compute. Needs deeper look
…At current Vancouver price range… i can see some people moving back… no every one like to downsize on the city…atleast the younger folks who is not rooted here .. had a few co-worker who moved back
Bears and bulls will all have their day. I’m no perma bear, I have owned 5 homes – 2 SFD, 2 condos, and currently 1 t/h; I’ve only been burnt once; luckily for me, it only meant that I worked for $0.25/hr, for 2 years of my spare time, while building a house from the dirt up. I was young and brash, once. My risk tolerance has declined, in inverse proportion to my age, which is only prudent. If you can afford to buy a home for cash right now, or are confident that you aren’t going to get divorced, be out of a job, or have the net worth to not give a hoot about declining values, bully for you. I wouldn’t recommend it to my kids, right now, though.
It’s Queen of the Bears, thanks.
I suppose I’m now going to be on the receiving end of a grammatical beat-down.
Thanks for the account. Funny you hear about this stuff all the time anecdotally but I like to hear about personal experiences. Talk about an effortless sell. You probably could have had a bunch of Michael Bolton posters on the living room walls and a puddle of dog pee on the carpet and it’d have no effect. Manias really make people do crazy things. I guess, good for you for seeing it for what it was.
I wonder what if your buyer has remorse now, or is disinterested? Hopefully they bought it to live in it.
If you’re looking for entertainment, have you tried watching Bandersnatch on Netflix? Fun times, hope they make some more. No depiction of the graph there either, so you can consider it part of your safe space.
3-4 years, from now? Good thing the bears’ patience muscle is well-developed…
Leo, affordability hasn’t improved much, I take it? Even with minutely lower prices, modest wage growth, and recently flat-to-slightly-lowering interest rates?
Wow we have a new king of the Bears. One day he or she will just disappear like the rest do thinking that they new better. In the meantime I have some entertainment.
Yes Victoria is not Vancouver and it is different.
Let the lesson start…
..it does feel like the minute hand on our Credit Doomsday Clock moved a little closer to midnight, not to signal that the end of humanity approaches, but that the end of trough loan losses is coming,”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canadian-banks-on-credit-doomsday-watch-cibc-analysts-warn-1.1245294
@LF
We had buyers wanting to submit offers before it was even listed. There had been 2 sales on our block in the preceding weeks, which had both attracted bidding wars. I think there was a lot of frustrated demand left over, so hopeful buyers were watching the neighbourhood closely.
We listed the house on a Wednesday, fended off the more rabid realtors until the open on Sat/Sun, with offers looked at on Tuesday. It seemed to be the standard technique to create maximum interest, at the time(May 2017). There were 6 offers, the highest was about 10% over assessed value, and 7% over the next closest offer. We couldn’t accept it fast enough! No subjects, no counter, and we agreed to a short close with a free month’s rent.
We listed just under assessed value, because there was a sense that the market was close to exhaustion. The realtor, who represented the buyers of all three houses that sold on our street that Spring, was very aggressive and all 3 sales involved foreign capital. Our realtor was a rock star, and definitely earned the listing by building a solid relationship with us over the preceding 2 years.
Can you give me a sense of what your selling experience was? How long did you have it up for, how much traffic, did you get a lot of offers or see a bidding war etc
Yeah I think the timing is less consistent than the cycle itself. More important where affordability is rather than how long it took to get there.
@Andy7 #58614
That’s a brutal drop, 29% by my count. Comparables are a nasty reality on the way down; I wouldn’t want to be selling a house in Lynn Valley.
Well, after all these examples of steep losses in Vancouver, I’d expect to see the usual suspects claiming that Victoria is different, buyers don’t need to leverage equity, qualify under B20 for a mortgage, borrow from Mom’nDad, or even need to work to pay the mortgage. Because Victoria buyers have shiny pink manes and and a lovely, pointy horn on their foreheads.
I ran into Hilliard MacBeth at the Oilers – Canucks hockey game in March 2019. I asked him about how his book was doing.
https://www.amazon.ca/When-Bubble-Bursts-Surviving-Canadian/dp/1459729803
He said “Back in 2015, everyone wanted to interview me to make fun about it. Now, no-one’s calling”.
True Story.
I agree. It’s interesting – if you added that all up, that would be about 5 years from peak to trough, then about that long again to get to the next peak. Total peak to peak…a bit over a decade. At least, that’s what the pattern to date would seem to suggest. Thoughts?
I suspect it will take even longer than that. Would not be surprised at 3-4 years.
Here’s another telling one… c/o twitter
North Van – listed for 1,050,000. Sold for $750k. 1355 Kilmer Road, North Van
https://www.zolo.ca/north-vancouver-real-estate/1355-kilmer-road
https://twitter.com/mortimer_junior/status/1115472566687154176
@guest_58592
“60 years ago, no one would have believed that a loaf of bread would cost $6 or more today. ”
I doubt bread has appreciated 40% in the last few years.
I thought this one was telling… c/o mortimer_1 on twitter.
“$300,000 loss (+ expenses) in North Vancouver
784 SYLVAN AVENUE, North Vancouver
Bought 2017 $1,980,000
Just sold for $1,680,000
2018 Assessed: $1,852,600
2017 Assessed: $1,968,900”
@ Introvert
“Even so, the numbers don’t include foreign ownership of either condo pre-sales or homes where corporate ownership could mask ownership by non-residents, said Yan – which would be likely to drive the statistics far higher. ”
I’d peg that 1 out of 10 closer to 5 or 6 out of 10 for SFHs.
I’ll take the 42% correction
https://biv.com/article/2019/04/one-10-west-vancouver-homes-foreign-owned
Local Fool / International Fool.
Lots of lots.
That’s because it is, but not all of them, and not all of them are in the Commonwealth. And, I don’t follow African housing markets, but it could be interesting.
But the nice thing is, you no longer need my assurances on Canadian RE. I’ve been telling you what the inevitable result of unsustainable price growth is, and now anyone who spends a few minutes looking at sales and credit activity in this country can assure themselves. Canada is entering into a national housing downturn, where the most speculative cities will probably see the greatest retrenchment. Victoria is one of those cities, and is also a city that has been heavily affected by VanRE spillover.
I don’t know if you’ve been watching the “spring market” in this country, but CREA is. Just today, they’ve seen fit to indicate they’re rather disappointed so far. Vancouver’s sales volumes are still seeing among the worst sales ever recorded. I actually almost don’t even see how they could go much lower. Victoria’s market is also continuing to steadily weaken. The funny thing is, this is all happening despite borrowing costs seeing marginal declines at some lenders. Yet buyers aren’t buying. Any guesses as to why? Do we actually need to guess?
Funny, TD bank is blaming the March numbers on weather. I wonder what the excuse next month will be? Perhaps, “excess pollen in the air is forcing potential buyers to stay home, lest they be struck down by hayfever”…
I remember you telling me you had some lots somewhere in the city. Are you looking at getting more at some point?
I have been watching this one since summer of 2018 when it was listed for 849 (I believe). They just missed the party. Finally the price is somewhat reasonable. The issue I always saw with it is that although it has a fair amount of potential it doesn’t really have a lot going for it in its current state. Maybe it will finally sell. Wonder if there’s an oil tank underneath :/
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/20400496/5-bedroom-single-family-house-934-empress-ave-victoria-central-park
We could always talk about the stunning RE declines in Halifax, Mumbai, Lagos, Port Moresby, or Zanzibar.
LF assured us that this housing downturn is affecting coastal cities throughout the Commonwealth…..
“Rising inventory, flat/even slowly falling prices, longer DoMs, fewer out of town buyers, and sales continue to be down YoY. All looks good to me”.
Looks really good to me, too. Rising inventory and shrinking of credit [these strict regulations are doing their job] spell it out in bold-faced text.
This will take 18 to 24 months from here to bottom, but the question is, “where is the bottom?”. We are just getting started in this price-range. The higher end luxury market is well on the journey with inventory high, lack of buying interest, no foreign capital, loads to extra taxes, and on and on. Just as predicted. The hot-spring selling season is anything but for the segment under review. Easter or not, I see lots of new For Sale signs and still every seller things they are sitting on a gold mine. There is a pure disconnect between bid and ask. Sellers are delusional and buyers should take their time / relax and enjoy the Spring. Let it [them] come to you when the time is right, which it is not.
As credit shrinks, and inventories rise, sellers will lament the by-gone days of 2016-17. Oh, what could have been……..
If you have the $$$, this is a good time to look into luxury/large lots properties to find a good deal. I personally find the <$1,000,000 market way over-priced compared to the upper scale homes. Kinda like the condo market in Vancouver or even here compared to SFH. The price gap has narrowed way too much and condos could see a large correction.
Thanks AZ. I didn’t see that. I thought the timing was pretty impeccable, haha.
@guest_58599
The article you posted was from Feb 27th.
Curious, just days after Steve Eisman (US investor, the big short) announces he’s shorting RBC, CIBC, and Laurentian Bank due to a mature credit cycle…
Laurentian Bank announces layoffs of 10% of its workforce while reporting “a steep drop in financial first quarter profits”.
https://outline.com/JuWL9Y
@sold out #58593 You partied with Baddie Winkle? I adore her!
victoriacharacterhomes.com. Or was that the basic google search you were talking about?
Land titles as the heritage designation should be noted with them. If it is not, check with the
local bylaw office. If it is not noted with land titles particularly, alterations can be made without a special permit. This aside it could create an uproar in a quiet aging community if a home believed to be heritage status was torn down. Proper demolition permiting should catch this though.
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Thank you for the update Leo!
Anyone know of any Designated Heritage home resources other than City of Victoria website/basic google search?
(From the previous thread:)
60 years ago, no one would have believed that a loaf of bread would cost $6 or more today. Similarly, it’s hard for me as a millennial to comprehend that the average house cost $70K in 1960.
Leo crunched the numbers a while ago:
Inflation-adjusted cycles from 1969 to 2018:
List of increases have been:
77%, 52%, 100%, 105%, 40%
List of corrections have been:
-5%, -13%, -42%, -12%, -10%
Rising inventory, flat/even slowly falling prices, longer DoMs, fewer out of town buyers, and sales continue to be down YoY. All looks good to me 🙂
I guess nothing for the bears to sink their teeth into…