Fraser Valley Residential Real Estate: January 2020 Infographic

Even “snowmageddon” couldn’t hold the Fraser Valley real estate market back from a strong start to the year. The January residential market statistics from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board show more year-over-year increases in sales, low injections of new listings, healthy buyer demand as well as significant benchmark price increases across all major residential home types.

As we would expect for the month of January, sales declined 16% to 22% depending on home type but overall sales still ended the month at 105% of the 10 year average for January. This is not surprising when you consider the impressive year-over-year increases of townhome sales (27%) and detached home sales (45%).

Total active listings increased between 10% and 15% in January, but only reached 78% of the 10 year average for the month. New listings were down as much as 23% (condos) in January which is a contributing factor to the low inventory of total listings and likely also played a part in the decrease in sales.

Consumer demand remains strong with sale price as a percent of original list price increasing for attached homes and remaining relatively flat for detached homes. Average days on market increased, typical for January, but the increase for attached homes was half the size of historical January increases. For example, in January 2019, the month-over-month increase in average days on market for condos rose by 5 days, or 12.5%. This year, the increase was only 1 day, or 2%.

Once again, HPI Benchmark prices were up across the board this month. Condos and detached homes increased 0.7% and townhomes increased 0.6%. We have a ways to go before we’ll reach the peak prices we saw mid-2018 but January’s benchmark prices have detached homes only 6.2% below peak pricing while townhomes are sitting 7.2% below and condos at 9.9%.

Anecdotally, reports from developers with new homes on the market are seeing heavy traffic at sales centres and even price increases at projects in some key markets.

What does this mean for development land in the Fraser Valley?

Current market trends mean we’re back to the age-old problem of finding viable development sites.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the strong market stats and positive reporting from sales centres continues to drive an incredible amount of demand for residential development land in the Fraser Valley. A demand that has been growing steadily each month since the Fall. Purchasing behaviour and underwriting remains more cautious than a couple years ago, but we’re hearing very little concern about market trajectory.

Check out our curated summary of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s January stats in infographics below.

View the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s entire stats package for January 2020 here.

This representation is based in whole or in part on data generated by the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board which assumes no responsibility for its accuracy.

Justin Mitchell

Personal Real Estate Corporation

Founding Partner
Residential Development Land
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Megan Johal

Personal Real Estate Corporation

Development Land Sales
Residential Development Land
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