With a flourishing spring market already creating a buzz and gaining momentum- now is a great time to be selling! With a massive shortage of supply this is driving prices up again and buyers are competing and levels not seen in some time. Again the market is heating up and positive outcomes and more normal and balanced environment is back in place.

Highlights of Dexter Realty’s February 2023 Report

• Prices increased month-over-month for the first time since May 2022

• Housing sales are up 77% from January; new listings are up just 5%.

• Multiple offers are being seen on Westside detached houses.

• Top townhouse market: New Westminster.

• Undersupplied North Vancouver is now a seller’s market.

The last three years have been an anomaly for housing markets around the world and Greater Vancouver is no exception. That is why it is virtually useless to compare our current, back-to-reality environment with what was happening a year or two years ago during a once-in-a-century event.

In 2021, we were in the grip of a global pandemic and a home-buying frenzy with mortgage rates at record lows. In February 2022, housing sales and prices hit a white-hot peak just before the federal government hosed it down with the first of eight straight interest rate increases through the Bank of Canada.

Today, in February 2023, the panic buying is history, mortgage rates have stabilized, and buyers are back into the first normal housing market in four years. Driven by buyer demand and low supply, February marked the first month-to-month home price increase in nine months.

Greater Vancouver housing sales, at 1,824 transactions in February, were up 77% from January 2023 and 21% higher than in February 2019, before the whole pandemic-influenced housing boom-and-bust began. February sales were also higher than in November and December 2022, and, we believe, signal the start of a strong spring selling season.

Buyers are already competing with other buyers for far fewer listings. The number of new listings in February was the lowest for that month going back to pre-1991, much the same as it was in January. Compared to January 2023, listings were only up 5%.

But, since sales have been slower over the past 10 months, a total of 8,283 homes were on the market at the of February, above the 7,862 active listings at the end of January and a few hundred more than in December 2022.

With buyers flowing back into the market, immigration hitting record levels and interest rates settling down, this appears a prime time to encourage housing starts.