B.C. residential home sales roared to near record highs in November, with both sales volume and unit sales more than doubling last month, according to the B.C. Real Estate Association.
Overall dollar volume of sales more than tripled to $3.5 billion compared with total sales of $1.07 billion in November 2008. The total number of units sold rose 165% to 7,182 units sold compared with 2,707. November's sales numbers is the highest since November 2005 when 7,721 units changed hands.
Continued low mortgage rates, pent-up demand and growing consumer confidence were cited as the key drivers of the market last month. Although, the huge increases in the past year reflected the record low number of unit sales in November 2008.
Eight of the 12 regional boards reported at least a doubling in the total number of units sold, including Metro Vancouver (252.4%), Fraser Valley (191.7%), Vancouver Island (111.2%), Victoria (115.9%), Kamloops (128.6%), Okanagan Mainline (104.1%), Chilliwack (163.5%) and Powell River.
The majority of the increase in sales volume and unit sales came from the Metro Vancouver market. The dollar volume of sales rose 329.8%, quadrupling to $1.95 billion from $453.8 million. The total number of units sold rose 252.4% to 3,133 units from 889 units.
In the Fraser Valley, the number of units sold rose to 1,409 from 483 with total sales volume rising to $608.2 million from $194.7 million.