I’ve mentioned a few times lately that keeping up on the blogging has been difficult in April as we’ve been very busy in our office (it’s a good thing!). From the MLS® statistics for April, it appears that our colleagues are very busy as well!
747 properties sold in the Greater Victoria real estate market in April 2009, up 24% from March 2009 and just 21 sales shy of the 768 properties that sold in April of 2008. I’m actually surprised to hear some people (and members of the media) stating that sales are still down. While those numbers are just shy of the April 2008 numbers, April 2008 was a very strong month and was also well before the credit crisis took hold in September.
While volumes continue to rise, prices are showing more stability: Average price for single family homes was up just a bit to $550,736 and the median price was also up a tiny bit from March to $515,000, which is still below the 6 month median of $540,179. See full statistics here. We would welcome continued sales with stable prices.
The rise in average and median prices of single family homes in March will be due in part to an increased number of sales over $1,000,000. Overall, all homes are also benefitting from a diverse economy.
So, where are these numbers coming from? We feel that the monetary stimulus packages (i.e.: really, really, freakishly low interest rates) that the federal government has thrown at the economy are starting to gain traction:
- - When you combine interest rates so low that they have never been seen before in Canada with price decreases of approximately 7-10%, the affordability of homes has gone up, well, through the roof — in many cases people are saving several hundreds of dollars PER MONTH on their mortgage payments, or are able to afford more homes (all the while still respecting Canada’s conservative lending practices.
- - The financial markets are slowly on the rise, albeit with continued volatility. The S&P TSX index was up 373 points today to 9,870 while the Dow Jones Industrial average was up 214 points to 8,426, also today. Despite the fact that the financial market gyrations are not likely over, investors are starting to cope with the fluctuations and some are even starting to feel optimistic. Although the Victoria Real Estate market rarely moves in tandem with the financial markets, we felt that many people would have to get over “Shock-tober” and watching their investment portfolios fall from grace before they would start making decisions of any kind — I feel that we are starting to see some of that activity now.
Many people doubted that the increases we saw in sales volumes in Febrary, March and now April would continue. Now that we have had three consecutive months of increased sales, we are not ready to say that sales will continue to rise indefinitely for the next several years. That being said, we consider the huge increases in affordability with significant increases in sales in the Greater Victoria Real Estate Market to be a very compelling argument to buy real estate in the local market.
Thanks for reading and please contact us if you need a referral to a mortgage broker or for any other of your real estate needs in Victoria.
Sean