Vancouver Benchmark House Price for 2008

[Cosmo]

The benchmark price for a Single Family Home in greater Vancouver is now $666,525.

Vancouver West is seeing the biggest drops in detached house and town homes.

Both of those benchmark prices are now down at least 18.5% year over year. Overall the benchmark house price for Greater Vancouver has dropped $104,725 since May of 2008, a loss of approximately $570 per day.

If you have a listing on the market right now and it is not priced way below market prices (for quick sale), the expected time on the market is just over a year.

At the current falling rate of $570 per day, you can expect to see the value of your property erode over $208,000 during that time.

And that's provided the values don't start to fall faster... which is what happened in November.

The drop in November has been astonishing. That one month saw the price of a detached SFH dropped $29,427, or -4.2%.

That means Vancouver homes lost almost $1,000 in value each day during the month of November.

You will recall that, several months ago, I suggested that anyone who wanted to sell their homes at that time should slash the price 30% and move it right away. I suggested that if they were to wait, market prices would unwind at an accelerating speed and even at 30% off, it would not move.

This is the reason for that advice.

It should be interesting to see what the month of December brings.

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Here are the benchmark prices since May:

May detached benchmark: $771,250

June detached benchmark: $765,654

July detached benchmark: $753,165

August detached benchmark: $737,985

September detached benchmark: $726,331

October detached benchmark: $695,962

November detached benchmark: $666,525

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There is another graph out there which compares the drop in prices in Vancouver to several comparable US cities (when their market's started to unwind).

The stats show that Vancouver's bubble is unwinding at an even greater speed than the decline experienced in those US cities at the 7 month mark of their decline.

If this trend continues, Vancouver's burst will be more substantial than that occuring in the US.

 

[Pantherdash]

DUDE, get over it! It was an over-inflated market. THAT was obvious, and if you didn't think so, you were STOOPID! I'm glad I sold my property in 2006! Lotsa great asian women got my money!

The bubble HAD to burts at some point!

Panther

 

[FunSugarDaddy]

a relative perspective

Your assuming everyone owns a house strictly for investment - not true.

Most own their homes to live in them and raise a family and they are in the market for the long run, perhaps 20-30 years or more. How have those guys done..they're the majority of the market.

In terms of wealth, I personally don't think it makes sense to factor your house into a retirement plan unless you plan on downsizing, so while it's important in terms of determining your net worth, it's not always relevant to determining the cash flow you can expect to retire on.

One thing of note is that MoneySense did an extensive survey on the wealth of Canadian's and what they found out is as follows:

This data is of 2007 (2003 figures)

If you were smack in the middle of the wealth distribution your net worth was between 92,400 - 244,300 (65,900-169,000)

If your net worth exceeded 656,700 (380,600 - 2003) you were in the top 20%

If age is factored in, Canadian families had to following net worth

more than

Wealthest 20% Middle

under 35 - 89,700 9,401-34,400

35-44 - 309,200 79,101-163,800

45-54 - 516,300 151,301-296,600

55-64 - 965,000 236,901-496,800

65 + - 618,100 195,701-357,800

Sorry this wasn't clearer. The first column (ignoring the age column) is net worth in the top 20% of the age bracket and the second and third columns are the range of net worth in the middle 20% of an age category.

 

[chris2008]

What else do you expect him to say? He has to feed his family too.

It's like a car salesman telling you not to buy a car.

It's never a bad time to buy for a commission sales guy, course why would it be? He is dependent on your business to keep his job.

Meanwhile that's exactly what the real estate liars are putting out now--"there's never been better buying opportunities as we've seen affordability quietly creep up." That from Cameron Muir chief liar for the BC Real Estate Association.

 

[xxxbrian]

I went checking around the web site and found this

Vancouver's detached house prices fell another 4.2% M/M in November contributing to combined residential prices falling 4.4% M/M (chart) Combined residential sales are 70% below last year and 36% below last month (scorecard). The market speculators who had planned to wait until the 2010 Olympics to sell, are reassessing what their real estate positions are actually worth as an investment asset. If Vancouver prices continue to fall as they have for the last 7 months then losses are going to exceed 25% annually. The annualized plunge is already at 27%. Revulsion to debt is being shared by all market participants. Buyers don't want to take it on even at low interest rates, and sellers are tired of making payments. At this point in time, cash (or gold) will give you a better yield. Here's a simple calculator.

In the December 4-11th 112 page Georgia Straight (a weekly alternative to the CanWest Global Communications Corp conglomerate Vancouver Sun and Province) the number of unsold real estate developer projects and reseller/flipper advertisement pages plunged another 24% M/M as ad budgets for massage parlors, brothels, phone sex and dating services also softened by 23% M/M. Furniture ads countered with a 23% M/M increase making the bet no doubt that the holidays are going to be spent watching a lot of TV from a comfortable perch.