‘Successful realtors are making very good money these days,’ Fraser Valley Real Estate Board president says
Bruce Constantineau
Sun
Lower Mainland house sales surged again last month, prices went up and successful realtors made “very good money,” Fraser Valley Real Estate Board president Reg Davies said Monday.
His comments came after the Fraser Valley board reported there were 1,679 home sales on the Multiple Listing Service last month — a 41-per-cent increase over September 2002.
There were 3,357 Greater Vancouver house sales in September, representing a 22-per-cent increase over the same month last year and the strongest September since 1992, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
“Successful realtors are making very good money these days and if they’re not, it’s only because they carry too many assistants and have too many expenses,” Davies said in an interview. “They have had excellent unit sales and if they’re working smart, they’re making a good dollar.”
Realtors typically receive a seven-per-cent commission on the first $100,000 of a property’s value and 2.5 per cent on the rest, which works out to $12,000 on the sale of a $300,000 home.
Coldwell Banker Love Realty realtor Derek Love, who sells homes in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Moody and Port Coquitlam, said he sold 34 properties last year with average prices ranging from $180,000 to $280,000. He expects to sell about 50 homes this year, with average prices ranging from $350,000 to $600,000.
Love said he sold to a lot of first-time buyers in 2002, but catered to more existing home owners this year. He said prices of detached homes have increased by $75,000 to $100,000 in his area in the past year and the supply of certain homes has become very tight.
“In Burnaby, it’s tough to find something in the $450,000-to-$600,000 range — those properties are almost gone,” Love said. “A year ago, I could show a client 12 to 15 decent listings in that range, but right now I’m down to just two or three.”
He said multiple offers on properties are common now and some of his listings have sold for more than the asking price. A detached home listed for $349,000, for example, recently sold for $355,000, while a co-op unit listed for $239,900 sold for $250,000.
Love expects the strong market will last as long as mortgage rates remain low, but warns there could be trouble if rates rise by three or four percentage points.
“People are spending $350,000 for homes in Coquitlam that need $30,000 worth of work and they’re booking themselves a five-year [mortgage] rate at 4.7 per cent,” he said. “If rates are at eight or nine per cent five years from now, you can be guaranteed we’re going to have problems.”
Adera Group vice-president Howard Steiss, whose company builds multi-family housing projects throughout Greater Vancouver, said new units in Langley and Surrey — priced from $190,000 to $250,000 — are selling extremely well and about 70 per cent of buyers are first-time buyers.
“We release our projects in phases because it’s too easy to oversupply the market,” he said. “We’ll continue to bring on further phases as the demand requires. Until we see interest rates move up, the market should continue to be brisk.”
Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association chief operating officer Peter Simpson said the home-construction market is “steady and manageable” now because it’s not taking off like a rocket. New residential construction in B.C. rose 15 per cent during the first eight months of this year to 15,430 units, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
“There might be a blip in housing starts from one month to the next, but the trend is steady and it’s up and we don’t see that changing any time soon,” Simpson said.
The benchmark price of a detached Greater Vancouver home sold on the MLS has increased by 12.9 per cent in the past year to $437,000, according to Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver figures.
The price of an attached home rose by 13.4 per cent to $280,000, while the price of an apartment unit increased by 15.3 per cent to $209,000.
© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun
