December 2019 Market Update
Happy New Year everybody and welcome to 2020! We are back and kicking the New Year off with the December 2019 update! You know what they say, in order to know where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been!
To get straight into it as we are raring to go, December is typically a quieter month for real estate. It’s Christmas, Hannakah, New Year etc so naturally people and generally more focused on other areas. So because of this, we usually deal with reduced numbers so the year over year becomes a more important/accurate figure. You can see 500 sales in BC for the month of December and think no big deal, however if the average is 250 home sales in the month then that’s a 100% increase. Something much more impactful. So it’s important not to get carried away on either end for December.
So let’s see some sexy figures!
The percentage differences really speak for themselves here. No matter how you look at it, December took a huge jump this year and continued the upward movement streak we saw from July 2018. What’s even more interesting though is the newly listed percentage here.
Because of this we are now finding ourselves in a sellers market in particular areas. But we cannot stress enough how realistic both buyers and sellers need to be here. A sellers market does not mean 2016 times are back and now you are just awaiting your property value to increase 5%, then 10%, then 20% and so on so forth. This is evident in the price changes already seen over the year. Since December 2018, benchmark pricing has reduced on average 3.03% since December last year. So although activity is up, pricing is still down. Further from this, you are seeing pricing slowly creep back up. The past few months have seen price increases of 0.2%, 0.4% and most recently 0.7% in December 2019. This is a trend that minimal price changes are happening and you are not about to gain 10% in the next month or two.
It’s also not just about prices increasing. For the sake of easy math, if your home has dropped in value by 5%, in order to actually gain 5% on your home value, you are looking at the market needing to increase by 10% (5% for your initial loss because of market conditions being you back to square one, then another 5% to actually be up.) So now look at the market increases regularly of less than 1% and you can see the problem here.
On the plus side, the end of 2019 made it a plus for both buyers and sellers. Sales are up substantially so feel assured you are in a good place if you are looking to make a move. This also has a knock on effect for Buyers as more property becomes available and provides more choice.
FYI - For an easy reference point, we’ve included the year-over-year sales to listing charts for Vancouver below!
We are envisioning a busy 2020. Opening weekends of January saw extremely busy open houses already and the trending is in the markets favour. Of course we cannot guarantee anything (unfortunately neither of our partners got us the fabled crystal ball so constantly mentioned!)
But any 2020 real estate endeavours you may find yourself looking into, we would love to help and be of assistance!
We look forward to hearing from you all over the coming years and THANK YOU to everyone who has trusted us thus far.
Until next week,
Happy New Year everybody and welcome to 2020! We are back and kicking the New Year off with the December 2019 update! You know what they say, in order to know where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been!
To get straight into it as we are raring to go, December is typically a quieter month for real estate. It’s Christmas, Hannakah, New Year etc so naturally people and generally more focused on other areas. So because of this, we usually deal with reduced numbers so the year over year becomes a more important/accurate figure. You can see 500 sales in BC for the month of December and think no big deal, however if the average is 250 home sales in the month then that’s a 100% increase. Something much more impactful. So it’s important not to get carried away on either end for December.
So let’s see some sexy figures!
The percentage differences really speak for themselves here. No matter how you look at it, December took a huge jump this year and continued the upward movement streak we saw from July 2018. What’s even more interesting though is the newly listed percentage here.
Naturally if more homes are on the market than 2018 (which was the case in the above graph) you would envision more sales to take place. However, the difference between Decembers newly listed homes and sales is substantial. This shows the significance of the market uptick.
Because of this we are now finding ourselves in a sellers market in particular areas. But we cannot stress enough how realistic both buyers and sellers need to be here. A sellers market does not mean 2016 times are back and now you are just awaiting your property value to increase 5%, then 10%, then 20% and so on so forth. This is evident in the price changes already seen over the year. Since December 2018, benchmark pricing has reduced on average 3.03% since December last year. So although activity is up, pricing is still down. Further from this, you are seeing pricing slowly creep back up. The past few months have seen price increases of 0.2%, 0.4% and most recently 0.7% in December 2019. This is a trend that minimal price changes are happening and you are not about to gain 10% in the next month or two.
It’s also not just about prices increasing. For the sake of easy math, if your home has dropped in value by 5%, in order to actually gain 5% on your home value, you are looking at the market needing to increase by 10% (5% for your initial loss because of market conditions being you back to square one, then another 5% to actually be up.) So now look at the market increases regularly of less than 1% and you can see the problem here.
On the plus side, the end of 2019 made it a plus for both buyers and sellers. Sales are up substantially so feel assured you are in a good place if you are looking to make a move. This also has a knock on effect for Buyers as more property becomes available and provides more choice.
FYI - For an easy reference point, we’ve included the year-over-year sales to listing charts for Vancouver below!
We are envisioning a busy 2020. Opening weekends of January saw extremely busy open houses already and the trending is in the markets favour. Of course we cannot guarantee anything (unfortunately neither of our partners got us the fabled crystal ball so constantly mentioned!)
But any 2020 real estate endeavours you may find yourself looking into, we would love to help and be of assistance!
We look forward to hearing from you all over the coming years and THANK YOU to everyone who has trusted us thus far.
Until next week,
Jay Mcinnes
T: 604.771.4606
jay@mcinnesmarketing.com
Ben Robinson
T: 604.353.8523
ben@mcinnesmarketing.com