Agent Will

What can I say?

Second highest September Volume in Vancouver real estate history.
Prices UP Year over Year.
Listing volume still down by 36% Year over Year.

BUT…

Listings volume is increasing as word finally gets out that now is a very good time to sell. There are a lot of questions clouding the future and anyone who says they know what the next year will bring is full of it. We didn’t expect 2009 to behave this way and with questions such as what will happen in the future with interest rates, the HST (which will NOT affect resale homes except where services are required), the Olympics, and the economic outlook/general confidence of the marketplace is concerned, well, I have no idea where we will go from here.

I do know that the Winter season, which we are entering, is generally a slower period of sales. This winter could be very long, indeed. Perhaps the “boom” (relative to the past current year) in listings are people thinking the same thing. List now and sell now. List in November/December and we have the slowest months, worst weather, and then the Olympics which will cause traffic and extraordinary difficulties in getting around town to showings. So that puts us in March when I expect we will see an explosion of listings. The question is whether we will see an equally large volume of buyers.

2010 is going to be very interesting, indeed. We, as a region but more specifically Vancouver and especially Downtown, have no previous event to compare this to. Expo’86 did not “shut the city down” nor occur when people start getting their homes listed. Nor did it have the amount of international focus that the Olympics will bring.

My advice to anyone considering selling in the next 6 months is to do it today. Prices are near peak levels and multiple offers are still flying fast and furiously. Too fast and too furiously, in my opinion. To the buyers, tread carefully out there. Be absolutely sure that you love that home you are offering on. If you don’t then wait. This inbalance of Buyers to Sellers will not last forever.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.