North of the Fraser Residential Real Estate: April 2020 Infographic
The April housing market statistics are in from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver and, as expected, they paint a picture of a market that has been put on pause while physical distancing and other measures have been encouraged in the fight against COVID-19.
Sales and new listings both had historic drops for the month as buyers and sellers put their real estate plans temporary on hold. Consequently, the sales to active listings ratio dropped substantially across all product types for the month.
Despite the freeze in sales activity, benchmark prices rose over April of 2019 with townhouses gaining by 2.8%, Condos by 2.7% and detached homes seeing a 2.3% increase. All product types also saw increases month-over-month except for condos, which saw a minor dip of 0.2% from last month. Given that many of the transactions that are being used to calculate these figures were firm prior to the pandemic hitting Canada it will be interesting to see how persistent price increases are in the coming months.
So What Does This Mean For The Development Land Market North Of The Fraser?
Despite the unprecedented disruption to society over the last two months, we have been busy writing offers and putting development sites under contract in our core markets North of the Fraser. Many of the developers we work with have shifted their focus towards deals with longer timelines (to both subject removal and completion) and sites that can accommodate product types that are more typically purchased by owner-occupiers as opposed to investors. While there is considerable risk in taking on a development site in this uncertain market, many developers that we work with are beginning to position themselves to capitalize on what they believe to be the beginning of an economic recovery lead in large part by residential real estate.
Check out our curated summary of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s April stats in infographics below.
Please note: areas covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver include: Whistler, Sunshine Coast, Squamish, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, and South Delta.
View the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s entire stats package for April 2020 here.
This representation is based in whole or in part on data generated by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver which assumes no responsibility for its accuracy.