Derrick Penner
Sun
The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says that since the spring home prices have come down 2.8 per cent from record highs reached in April. Photograph by: Postmedia News files
VANCOUVER — B.C. Lower Mainland real estate markets saw their slowest July in decade, the region’s real estate boards reported Wednesday, with sales down by almost half from July 2009’s red-hot markets and prices slipping from the previous month’s levels.
In Metro Vancouver, excluding Surrey, realtors saw 2,255 sales registered through the Multiple Listing Service, a 45-per-cent decline from July 2009. In the Fraser Valley, July MLS sales were off 47 per cent with 1,001 transactions.
The benchmark price for detached homes, an average for typical homes sold, dipped a negligible 0.2 per cent to $793,193 in the area of Metro Vancouver covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
Fraser Valley Real Estate Board realtors saw its detached-home benchmark hit $510,470 in July, down 1.5 per cent from June, and the board reported that its benchmarks in all three categories fell from the previous month for the first time since January 2009.
“With the pace of home sales and listings easing off in our market, we’ve begun to see a leveling of home prices from the record highs seen in the spring, creating greater affordability,” Jake Moldowan, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, said in a news release.
The board added that since the spring, home prices have come down 2.8 per cent from record highs reached in April.
Deanna Horn, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, said that while real estate sales typically slow in the summer, “we didn’t anticipate this level of change.”
Both boards noticed that new listings of homes for sale are also waning.
In Metro Vancouver, new listings were off almost 18 per cent from a year ago. In the Fraser Valley, new listings were down 25 per cent.
Both markets, however, still have higher levels of total inventory. In Metro Vancouver, the inventory of 16,431 homes is 33 per cent higher than July 2009. In the Fraser Valley, the inventory of 10,852 listings is 14 per cent more than in the same month a year ago.
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