Vancouver Real Estate Market Update For September 2023

In this week’s episode, we're diving into the current state of the Fall real estate market with the September Stats and it's not looking very (pumpkin)spicy. With falling prices, low sales volumes, high mortgage rates, and a significant lack of inventory to choose from, it's shaping up to be quite a challenging season for both buyers and sellers.

Let’s look at the numbers - We saw a total of 1,926 sales in September, which is a 20% decrease compared to August. This marks the fourth consecutive month of declining sales, which is unusual for the Fall market - although perhaps it isn’t when you consider the circumstances. However, September still surprised us with year over year sales volume increasing by 13%, but still 26% below the 10-year seasonal average.

At that pace, it’s looking more and more like there won't be a traditional 'fall' market this year, as high mortgage rates and below-average sales volumes are likely to persist throughout 2023 and into 2024.

New Listings are up! In September, 5,446 properties were newly listed, showing a 28% increase year-over-year and a 5.2% rise above the 10-year seasonal average. Interestingly, monthly new listings have rarely exceeded the 6,000 mark since 2005, remaining relatively steady over 18 years despite a 600,000 increase in GVRD population.

Total inventory sits at 10,647 listings and this is only the second time it has crossed the 10,000 mark in the past year, increasing by 7% month-over-month. While inventory is up by about 100 listings compared to the previous year, it remains 40% lower than pre-pandemic levels. We expect a slight climb in inventory for October and November and we should also mention that foreclosure rates account for a negligible 0.005% of the total inventory.

The Sales to Active Ratio has us sitting in balanced market territory at 17.7%, this ratio is down 6.3% month-over-month and a significant 19% since the peak in May when it hit 37% - a strong Sellers market. This marks the first time the market has reached a balanced state since January, albeit for just one month.

The Housing Price Index (HPI) has dropped for the second consecutive month, down 0.4% month-over-month to $1,203,300. While this reflects a 4.4% year-over-year increase, prices are only down 5% from their all-time high in April 2022, despite substantial increases in mortgage rates. Median prices have seen some fluctuations, jumping by $65,000 but recovering from a $78,500 drop the previous month to reach $965,000, which is 3.5% under the all-time high!

Join us on the podcast this week and get the full story!