Higher sales and fewer new listings helped the benchmark Metro Vancouver home price rise 5% to $631,600 in August, compared with the same month a year ago.
Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) statistics released September 3 showed that sales across the region rose 10.2% to 2,771 in August compared with August 2013. That hike happened while new listings fell 5.9% during those same two periods, to 3,940.
“Broadly speaking, home prices in the region are continuing to experience modest, incremental gains,” said REBGV president Ray Harris.
The region’s benchmark price at the end of July was $628,600.
“Activity this summer has been strong but not unusual for our region. The volume of home sales has been higher than we’ve seen in the last three years, yet below the record-breaking levels of the past decade.”
While sales have been strong on a year-over-year basis, sales were 9.5% lower than the 3,061 transactions conducted in July. New listings were 20% lower than the 4,925 in July.
Combined, that translated into the second straight monthly decline in a key indicator for determining market strength, the sales-to-active-listings ratio.
That ratio now sits at 18.7%, or the lowest since March.
Conventional real estate wisdom is that a market is considered to be a buyers’ market when the sales-to-active-listings ratio is below 13%.
A balanced market exists when the ratio is between 13% and about 21%, Harris told BIV earlier this year. It is then considered a sellers’ market when the ratio is above 21% for at least a few months, he added.
