Metro Vancouver assessments down: Forces slowly lowering property values for most homeowners
Douglas Todd
The Province
Headlines highlighting how the values of almost one million homes in the Lower Mainland have dropped in the past year will likely hand worrying news to those who just bought a place, a mixed message to longtime homeowners and good tidings to the many desperate to purchase a dwelling for the first time.
This second downward year in a row in Metro Vancouver prices — after more than two decades of fast-rising values — suggests new B.C. government taxes aimed at limiting foreign and domestic property speculation are having an impact, even while the Lower Mainland’s population continues to grow through in-migration.
The B.C. Assessment Authority will send out notices to Greater Vancouver households in the next few days informing them that the estimated values of their detached houses have dropped significantly, especially in high-end neighbourhoods like Vancouver’s Shaughnessy and West Vancouver’s British Properties.
The 2020 assessments, which reflect market values based on July 1 of last year, are down about 11 per cent overall in Vancouver, which means the average value of a detached house is now $1.7 million and a condo runs around $686,000.
Values have also dipped by about 11 per cent in Burnaby, Port Moody, the City of North Vancouver and Coquitlam, as well as by 14 per cent in Richmond and by 16 per cent across posh West Van, where the average price still hovers at a king-sized $2.4 million. This year, unlike last year, values also declined in many Fraser Valley cities, with Abbotsford dipping by four per cent.
Meanwhile, condo prices in each region generally depreciated by a few percentage points less than detached homes.
The only Lower Mainland municipalities that saw a rise in prices were the international ski resort of Whistler and the neighbouring village of Pemberton, where values jumped by five per cent. The price of a typical detached dwelling in fashionable Whistler has now climbed to $2.03 million.
Unlike the rest of the Lower Mainland, neither Whistler nor Pemberton is subject to the B.C. government’s foreign-buyers tax or new speculation and vacancy taxes. Many other places in B.C. that aren’t subject to the taxes, like Port Alberni, Kamloops and tiny Alert Bay, also saw valuation hikes this year.
While many global and local factors are at play in housing, the B.C. government and Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Selina Robinson take justifiable credit for having at least a partial role in diminishing prices in real estate hot spots like Metro and parts of the Fraser Valley.
“This is a positive sign that our government’s efforts to make housing more affordable for more British Columbians are having a real impact. For too long, the previous government sat back and watched housing prices climb well out of the reach of average people,” Robinson said. “We are encouraged by signs that property values are continuing to stabilize.”
Even though the decline in assessed values in Metro and most of the Fraser Valley is hard news for people who took out mortgages to buy new homes in the past two years, the B.C. government is using taxation to decrease demand in an effort to achieve what many call a “soft landing” in prices. That’s after spectacular increases, especially since 2014.
Vancouver home values have risen by 206 per cent since 2000, according to The Economist’s Global Cities House Price Index. That’s the most dramatic two-decade real estate market increase among 40 of the world’s most sought-after cities, most of which offer locals much higher median wages than Metro.
© 2020 Postmedia Network Inc
