Vancouver housing market slows, prices remain high

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says high prices, new taxes, rising interest rates and stricter mortgage requirements are some of the factors causing a recent slowdown in the buying and selling of properties.

Real estate board president Phil Moore says, even with lower sales, prices will remain high as long as the selection of properties is slim.

"Last month was the quietest March for new home listings since 2009, and the total inventory, particularly in the condo and townhome segmentsof homes for sale, remains well below historical norms."

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Metro Vancouver saw2,517 homes change handsthis past March, a 29.7 per cent decline over last March.

Drops in average and median prices

Overall, the board said the current composite benchmark price an estimated value for a typical property in Greater Vancouver is $1,084,000, a 1.1 per cent increase over the previous month.

But that masked noticeable decreases in the average sale price of homes (from $1.74 millionto $1.61 million) and apartments (from $750,000 to $724,000) from February to March.

In addition, the median selling price of homes decreased by 13 per cent and apartments by eightper cent on the west side of Vancouver.

However, with demand forsales continuing to outstrip supply for condos and townhomes, the real estate board saysprices will continue to remainhigh.

The benchmark price for a condo in Greater Vancouver was$693,500 in March, a 26.2 per cent increasefrom March 2017, while bencmarkprices for townhomesreached $835,300, a 17.7 per cent hike from the previous year.

"Condos have been extremely hot over the last year... but we're likely going to see that upward pressure start to slow, simply because price levels have got to a point where they're squeezing some buyers out of the marketplace," said Cameron Muir, the chief economist for the B.C. Real Estate Association.