January Market Update

By Matt Magee

There’s opportunity in every market- guidance and knowledge to properly assess how to proceed is the key! You should always be educated in order to win! Get what you want! Timing is everything!

January ended with 1,030 properties sold of all types across Greater Vancouver, meaning sales more than doubled in the past two weeks of the month compared to the first half. As well, new listings increased from 1,379 in the first two weeks of January to end with 3,384, but this was still the lowest number of new listings for January going back to before 1991 – more than thirty years ago.

This speaks to the one thing keeping prices from declining more than they have. Sellers are not desperate. There is a lot of equity in owning a home and that keeps buyers from going into the market and from sellers rushing to get out. Since the start of the pandemic three years ago, the composite home price in Greater Vancouver has increased by 26%, or about $286,000. The typical detached house is now worth $411,000 more than in January 2020, at a January 2023 benchmark of $1,801,300.
If there is one prediction that could be made about this market, it’s that listings will not be coming in abundance.

In some markets, the low inventory sparked bidding wars in January and turned key suburban municipalities into seller’s markets as tenants aimed to move into ownership and owners tried to improve their housing.

Here are some markets bucking the downward sales trend:

A Richmond condo listing attracted 11 offers in January as the local condo market moved from a balanced to a seller’s advantage.
In North Vancouver, townhomes and condos are in a seller’s market with January townhouse sales at similar levels to January 2022.
The strata sector was in seller’s market conditions in North Burnaby, New Westminster and even Coquitlam, despite a multi-family building boom in all three cities.
In 12 of the 22 Greater Vancouver markets, townhouse prices increased from December 2022 to January 2023 and were up an average of 0.8% across the entire region to $1,020,400, while benchmark condo apartment prices rose 1% month-over-month to $720,700.