November’s Real Estate MLS statistics show that we are still in a seller’s market with record-low inventory available

November usually sees a slight market slow down as the holiday season starts to near and people have other priorities on their minds. Not this year! Even areas that have not seen a lot of real estate activity in the past, such as Mission are having record-breaking sales in the month of November that appear to be pushing right on into December.

This month we have gone deeper by including both the Fraser Valley and Great Vancouver areas, which we further broke down by city to give a deeper and better understanding of the information in more detail. Feel free to look at the whole report or just skip to the areas that you are most interested in.

As we dig in deeper, we can really zero in the ever-pressing issue of short supply by area. The cities with the biggest supply issues seem to be White Rock and Mission, though every area has supply issues based on the sales and price increases month to month and year over year. Sales only seem to be down, where inventory is also down meaning there is nothing to purchase so more sales were not possible even with people ready, willing, and able to buy.

There have been no new announcements from the provincial government on its new ‘cooling off’ period discussed last month. This will be monitored closely and updated as soon as more information becomes available.

We have hope that once the provincial government reaches out and discusses this new approach with industry experts that they will realize the issue is and always has been a severe lack of supply and start looking at ways to hold local cities and municipalities more accountable for this, in an effort to help create a more balanced market for every citizen.  It would be a much-needed new approach instead of simply increasing stress tests which only continue to knock out the entry-level buyers, while those with deep pockets remain unaffected, as they have in the past. We at Fifth Avenue want to help ‘bring people home’ and making it harder for entry-level buyers to purchase with stress tests just makes it so they remain, renters, instead of owning their first home, while seasoned investors with already deep pockets continue to remain unaffected by these policies.  If we look at adding more supply to the balance of the market we enable more people, and especially the entry-level market to aspire to the dream of owning their home instead of renting.

Immigration is about to re-open and if we do not fix our supply issue prices will only inflate further as proven with an understanding of basic economics. The Lower Mainland’s limited land means there is limited space to build in conjunction with extremely slow municipal approval rates, home prices here will remain a contentious issue and across the industry, as they continue to rise due to an obvious lack of supply that is still quickly diminishing and no real efforts to solve this issue. Only pandering and pushing out the little guy in the end, while blaming immigrants/foreign buyers or even Realtors who are just there to help.

All that said there is a rumour that interest rates are set to rise which will diminish everyone’s buying power as the cost to borrow goes up.  Now is a great time to get in the market at today’s rates before this happens. If it is a resale from MLS and complete quickly you can talk to your bank or mortgage broker about a preapproval that is good for 3 to 6 months depending on the lender.  If you are buying presale, make sure they have a blanket appraisal with one or two institutions and then try and obtain a pre-approval from those institutions offering the blanket appraisal as they can usually hold your rate until completion up to 3 years out on high-rise, 2 years on low rise and 12 months for townhomes. Just have your realtor representative find out from the development’s sales team if they have the blanket appraisal to ensure this is something that can be offered to you first.

For anyone looking for pre-sale opportunities in the Fraser Valley, Tangerine Developments has envisioned a new limited collection 1, 2 & 3 Bedroom Condominium homes in Central Langley, Flora & Fauna is a park inspired residences coming soon. Learn more at www.flora-fauna.ca