BC 2010 Residential Markets
British Columbia 2010
The Landcor Report March 3
BC 2010 Residential Markets – The Big Chill finally thaws?
Quarterly Sales Counts/ BC All
When the winter winds blow hard and cold, herd animals instinctively find warmth and strength in their sheer numbers. For examples, horses are smart; they gather together, find whatever shelter they can find, put their backs against the wind and form a big, hairy, comforting mutual windbreak as they wait for the cold blast to abate.
Other domestic animals aren’t so smart. When cows get caught in a hard snowstorm, they usually just stay put, dimly hoping for the best. If enough cows clump together, their collective heat can hold off the cold wind for quite a while. However, if there’s only a few of them, it’s every bovine for itself. Smaller domestic animals have it tougher. Pigs and chickens? Left unprotected, they don’t have enough thermal mass and can simply freeze solid, ice cubes with legs.
Landcor Data Corporation rounded up the latest 2010 statistics for home sales across regional BC. Like a mixed group of animals in really big grazing range toughing out a prolonged economic blizzard, certain residential product categories in certain areas did better than others and others, far worse.
At first glance, the big picture looks good.
In BC, average prices across all product categories held firm, even as overall sales and total value slipped in 2010, off by 8.63 percent or 100,900 units versus the 110,503 sales posted in 2009 (and off by almost 37 percent from the 159,185 addresses changing hands in 2006). Total value for 2010: $47.15 billion, down slightly from $47.82 billion in 2009. In specific categories:
Single-Family Detached
(SFD) average sales price rose 6.94 percent in 2010 or from $457,544 to $489,284 (and an impressive 38.33 percent compared to the $353,699 average in 2006).Attached
posted a $323,244 average sales price and a modest yet sound 2.97 percent gain over 2009 (up 24.22 percent from the $297,914 average in 2006).Condominium
Looking at BC’s overall residential numbers, condos are doing just fine. As the old song goes: "Easy pickin’s, ain’t nobody here but us chickens." But as the older saying goes: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
: Average sale price up 2.58 percent in 2010 to $323,244 (and a 33.52 percent five-year rise from the 2006 average of $242,070).Sweet Schemes are Made of H’ST
Who are we to disagree? Annie Lennox is still warbling, BC premier Gordon Campbell has wobbled off the stage but for bad or for good, the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) is home to roast.
Landcor Data took a recent look at residential sales in BC, prior to and after the July 1, 2010 implementation of the HST and compared the 2010 figures to same-month 2009 figures.
Call it coincidence but prior to the July 1 ‘dread’ line, home sales surged. Compared to the 2009 figures, February 2010 sales surged by almost 83 percent (7,767 sales versus 4,447). From this percentage peak and as the market did its usual springtime warming, the number of sales was still above the norm. As July 1 neared, sales were 26 percent above the norm, 14,981 versus 11,936 . . . and then sales activity dropped off the tree.
As of July 7, 2010, comparable monthly sales were off by almost 36 percent (8,177 sales versus 12,719 posted in July 2009). For all the months following, residential sales in post-HST 2010 were much diminished, down anywhere from almost 45 to almost 33 percent compared to monthly sales in the year previous.
On the surface and smoothed down peak and slump over the year, the overall post-HST drop in 2010 sales was about 8.9 percent but that’s the entire year averaged, wild yet brief surge and (ongoing?) double-digit slump.
The Closer Look
Long-time homeowners are still sitting relatively pretty, some prettier than others. Conversely, if you’re a recent owner holding the housing equivalent of a chicken and in the ‘wrong’ region, 2010 showed mixed results. In some product classes, values and sales got truly plucked over (note suspect pun). On a cheerier note and after years of tougher times, non-urban BC is on better economic grounds.
1
% change 2009 - 2010 2 % change 2008- 2010|
BC |
2010 |
2009 |
% Chg1 |
2008 |
% Chg2 |
||||||
|
Number of Sales |
100,970 |
110,503 |
-8.6% |
113,654 |
-11.2% |
||||||
|
Total Value of Sales |
$47.51B |
$47.82B |
-0.7% |
$48.19B |
-1.4% |
||||||
|
Detached |
Average |
$489,284 |
$457,544 |
6.9% |
$453,288 |
7.9% |
|||||
|
Median |
$485,000 |
$458,000 |
5.9% |
$455,500 |
6.5% |
||||||
|
Condo |
Average |
$323,224 |
$315,108 |
2.6% |
$312,464 |
3.4% |
|||||
|
Median |
$320,000 |
$310,000 |
3.2% |
$308,000 |
3.9% |
||||||
|
Attached |
Average |
$370,082 |
$359,424 |
3.0% |
$366,934 |
0.9% |
|||||
|
Median |
$363,000 |
$350,000 |
3.7% |
$361,100 |
0.5% |
||||||
Residential Sales Summary
