According to the February statistic report released by the Real Estate Board of Vancouver,, The MLS® Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver is currently $1,313,400. This represents a 20.7 percent increase over February 2021 and a 4.6 percent increase compared to January 2022.
“Listings inch up, demand remains steady and price gains continue”.
House price growth in Vancouver has been very high in recent years. It’s hard to say, prices have been rising which raises your cost of ownership but interest rates are projected to rise in the future which will further increase ownership costs. Overall, according to the CMHC, there is a low risk of a price correction in Vancouver. If you are buying your forever home the risks of buying now are low.
With so few listings of existing homes, more and more people are pushed into the pre-sale market whether you are first-time buyers or savvy investors.
Almost half the condos in Vancouver are not-owner occupied, and almost one-fifth of the detached homes, according to Canadian Housing Statistics Program
Last month, one of my clients bought a two-bedroom (about 850sf) presale at Brentwood neighborhood in North Burnaby with a price tag of over 1.0 million, pretty much the starting point for the two bedrooms type there. We started to look for investment properties for this client last summer with a budget of about $900,000 right after he sold his two-bedroom rental property in Richmond. The original plan was to purchase a three-bedroom townhouse in Burnaby or Surrey. But very soon, he realized that townhouse-type properties are out of reach with his budget. Don’t forget, that same client bought a single-detached house in Richmond’s west side at 1.35 million back in summer 2020 to move in. And now, with 1.05 million before GST plus 5 more years waiting period, it can only get him an 850 sf apartment. But he’s happy with the presale unit.
So, maybe we can say there’s still that element of optimistic and promising consumer sentiment to the future market here in Greater Vancouver? Consumer sentiment, unfortunately, is a poor predictor of future price trends. People planning to buy a home could wait for a possible market correction, but there’s no guarantee that prices will be lower by the end of 2022.
