July New Housing Price Index

Statistics Canada has released the New Housing Price Index for July.

Once again, Victoria is showing some of the slowest month over month and year over year new house price gains. For the period of July 2006 to July 2007, Victoria had a 1.1% change in the new house price index. Tops was Saskatoon at 51.4%.

"For Canada, the pace of growth in new housing prices slowed for the 11th consecutive month in July. It went from 7.8% in June to 7.7% in July.

Saskatoon set a record high year-over-year increase for the fifth consecutive month. Prices in Winnipeg were 15.7% higher than in July 2006 in the wake of land shortages and development costs. New housing prices in Edmonton continued to increase at a fast pace with a year-over-year increase of 38.4%, due to hikes in land values from developers."

Go figure.

August Housing Starts

CMHC's housing starts report showed significant decreases in month over month and year over year housing starts for Greater Victoria. August 2007 had 110 housings starts. In comparison, July 2007 had 236 and August 2006 had 374. The number of housing starts for the year to date has 2007 only slightly behind 2006.

Does this signal anything? Is construction slowing down? I don't believe that one slow month represents a trend. With any new project coming online, next month's starts could be equally impressively high.

September 8 Week Ending Stats

It's September. Fall is coming, the kids are back in school, and housing inventory should start to increase as the number of sales continues decreasing.

There was a slight SFH inventory increase this past week. The biggest changes are 5 fewer homes priced between $300k and $400k and 7 more homes priced between $500k and $600k. As of today, 72% of all single family homes listed on MLS.ca have an asking price of $500000 or higher.

I know this isn't a Calgary or Alberta housing market blog, but I love watching the average sale price posted on CREB's website drop. Calgary's average sale price has gone from $491k on August 23 (the peak was around $507k) to $477.5k today. That's nearly $14k in 16 days! I wonder how many Albertans will be scurrying to purchase our properties as their bubble bursts!

August Sales Numbers

HHV and Roger beat me to the punch for commentary on the VREB's release of the August sales numbers. Check out their blogs for some great insight.

All that's left is for me to bore you with some graphs, and an update to the football score.

Median single family home prices. Ouch, how the median in Victoria is dropping. The rest of the Capital Region District is really having to take up the slack.

Looking at sales of SFH in the past two years, the number of sales is higher this year. Median price appreciation continues at double digit or high single digit gains.

Condo sales numbers continue to be strong. However, the median price appreciation has been marginal the past couple of months.

This summer has been hot for sales of townhomes in Greater Victoria. The median sales price has been flat the past four months.

And finally, the Bears have scored a touchdown this month. The average sales price for condos and townhomes were lower than the six month rolling average. Without the sale of the $5million+ home in Oak Bay, average price of SFH would also have been lower than the six month average. Score: Bulls 26 Bears 10.

September 1 Week Ending Stats

Short entry today. SFH inventory on MLS.ca up slightly this past week. Townhome and condo inventory down slightly.

Tuesday should bring us August sales numbers. I'm guessing active listings will decrease to between 3300 and 3200 for the month. MLS sales to be above last year - between 750 and 800. Generally, I think sales prices will be down a little, not much. Any other guesses or predictions?

CMHC "Housing Now" Report for July

First things first, for VG, here's the front page of the Edmonton Sun from earlier this week.

CMHC has released their "Housing Now" report for July. Housing starts for July 2007 were up 116.5% from July 2006. Year to date, starts are 18.9% higher in 2007.

Housing units under construction has the wow factor. There are 3278 housing units currently under construction in Greater Victoria. This is 52% higher than last July. Of that number, 2252 of those units are condos!

CMHC's average SFH selling price dropped slightly from June to July. Looking at their sales-to-active listings ratio, it appears to still be a sellers market. The townhome and condos markets are not quite as hot as the SFH market. Average selling price showed a month-over-month drop for both townhomes and condos.

Alberta's Wealth Rollercoaster

Hat tip to anonymous at 5:21pm. How do like the front page of the Edmonton Sun today? I dare say, it will be a cold day you-know-where before the local media puts a title like this on their front page!

The whole article can be found here. Average sale price in Calgary continues to drop as well.

Remember buddy here who bought two condos at Bear Mountain last fall? Unless he is independently wealthy, how long before him, and the tens of dozens of other Albertans, Americans, Irish, whoever, that bought condos out here as investments, start to sell off their properties because their artificial wealth back home has whithered away? How long before our active MLS listings hits 4000, 5000, 6000??? When will it start to skyrocket? And how high will it go?










Perhaps, an applicable analogy is to liken our current listings inventory to a rubber band. It continues to be stretched until finally, it's released, and away it goes!

August 25 Week Ending Stats

Single family home listings on MLS.ca are up slightly this week. The largest increase saw 8 more homes listed in the price range of $300k to $400k. There are 11 fewer homes listed in the $400k to $500k range.

Year over year, MLS.ca listings of 2 bedroom condos and 3 bedroom SFH are down significantly from last year. 3 bedroom townhomes listings have decreased since June, but are still up year over year.

Here's a good article to read in the New York Times regarding Countrywide Financial Corp. Housing Panic rants on about this company and it's CEO. I think it's justified. He has not bought a share in his own company since 1987! I'd bet on Countrywide going belly-up. Any guesses on what impact that would have on housing and real estate in Canada?

Writer's Block

Sorry folks. I haven't been posting or writing or much of anything lately. I've recently switched positions at work and have been coming home pretty beat. I've got a little case of writer's block and I feel a little real estated out.

I'm getting tired of the constant cheer leading of the local real estate market by the media. I can't comprehend how they can say, in the same breath, that the U.S. market is so up the creek, but here in Victoria, prices will NEVER go down!

I have been enjoying the stock market roller-coaster over the past couple weeks. I'd sure love to be able to drink coffee and watch CNBC all day. It's like watching a basketball game!

I'm also finding the Alberta market quite interesting. Inventory is through the roof in Edmonton (and Calgary). Calgary's Real Estate Board has a 30 day rolling average selling price. It's been going down the past couple weeks. It was over $500k (up to around $507k I believe), and currently sits at $491k. I wonder if Alberta's market will be a sign of things to come for us.

Please carry on with the great comments! Thanks!

August 18 Week Ending Stats

The number of active listings of SFH in Greater Victoria continued to decline this week.

- There are 969 SFH currently listed on MLS.ca
- This is 34 less than last week.
- This is 207 fewer listings than our recent peak on June 23 (there were 1176 SFH listings that day)

Houses are either selling or people are delisting their homes. I believe that it is the former. Sold stickers continue to be plastered against realtor signs. The market below $600000 continues to be quite hot, while above $600000, not so hot. I don't have proof, but that's what it appears to be.

It's quite perplexing how inventory is decreasing at this time of the year. Late summer and heading into fall, inventory should be increasing. I think Vancouver is seeing the same happenings. Rob Chipman's inventory is down from the peak of 2 months ago as well.

Possible reasons - a run on the market since interest rates appear (or appeared) to be rising. Perhaps it's the ever increasing popularity of 40 year mortgages. Yet more moms and dads are helping their kids. Any other ideas?

I've added another blog link under "The Nationals" section at the side. Titled "Canadian Mortgage Trends", it looks to contain some good bits of information.