June 17 Market Update

MLS numbers update courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.

	June 2013				June2012
	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4
Uncond. Sales	173	341			637
New Listings	418	730			1449
Active Listings	4809	4848			5189
Sales to New Listings	41%	47%			44%
Sales Projection	692	682
Months of Inventory					8.1

Trend continues.  Slightly higher sales, slightly lower listings than the same period last year.  Lots of bubble talk in the media and chatter about changes at CMHC, but so far nothing concrete has come out in the open.  Whatever happens with CMHC will be the key development in the housing market this year.

June 10 Market Update

MLS numbers update courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.

	June 2013				June2012
	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4
Uncond. Sales	173				637
New Listings	418				1449
Active Listings	4809				5189
Sales to New Listings	41%				44%
Sales Projection	692
Months of Inventory					8.1

Beginning of month sales predictor says to expect 606 sales.   Pretty much a repeat of last year as it has been for a while.  July 2012 is when the mortgage change bombshell hit and tanked the market for the next 8 months.  Will we get a similar hit this year?

Also, just how slow is this market?   We know sales are near decade lows, but how does it compare to the 90s?   Thanks to a simple man for providing the population data which allows us to adjust for the growth of Greater Victoria...

So inventory is around the same as it was in the correction of the 90s....

While sales are the lowest relative to population that we've ever seen.   New listings are about middle of the road.  Expect them to continue to decline.

May numbers

Preliminary post until the VREB releases the summary for the month.  Thanks to  Marko Juras for the early update.

May May
2013 2012
Net Unconditional Sales: 659 659
New Listings: 1,428 1,740
Active Listings: 4,783 5,015

Sales are dead on to the number recorded last year.  Last year also had the same number of business days, so the sales rate is precisely the same.  New listings are down 18%, and for the second month we are down YoY in terms of inventory.

May 27 Market Update

MLS numbers update courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.

	May 2013				May 2012
	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4
Uncond. Sales	96	235	367	520	659
New Listings	277	584	916	1173	1740
Active Listings	4568	4642	4724	4745	5015
Sales to New Listings	35%	40%	40%	44%	38%
Sales Projection	---	600	602	664
Months of Inventory					7.6

Another mini sales surge like we saw in mid April.   Again we will hit last year's sales numbers +- some small percentage.   Sales rate of 28.9/business day is identical to last year's 29 at this time in the month, but last year we had 16% more new listings.

A small sign of life, but still nowhere near any kind of sensible sales/list ratio.  In the boom times this was around 75%, while in the 90s flat market it bounced between 50% and 60%.

In other news we bought a house.

Debt, savings, fearmongering

Just some reposted links (thanks koozdra) to get rid of that dreaded "newer" link.

Transition from low interest rates will be painful.    Nice to see they're at least aware of the problem, but it remains to be seen whether their actions to reduce risk will do so, or tip the market into the ditch even faster.

1/3 of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque.   Not much detail there, but apparently the people that aren't saving are of various income levels, so it ain't just those scummy renting ne'er do wells.

Mortgage brokers suddenly concerned about rental rates.  Won't someone think of the renters!

Zoocasa.com has launched in Canada with MLS listings.   Only Toronto so far, but apparently Victoria is in the next group of cities that will get the MLS upgrade.  Finally some competition in this space and the CREA are going to have to aggressively move to modernize their site to stay competitive.    Zoocasa seems to have quite an odd business model based on collecting money from agents for referrals, and then giving some of it back to the buyer.   I wonder how that will integrate with the business model of discount reduced commission realtors?

So far Zoocasa only has about half of the listings that are on realtor.ca

May 21 Market Update

MLS numbers update courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.

	May 2013				May 2012
	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4
Uncond. Sales	96	235	367		659
New Listings	277	584	916		1740
Active Listings	4568	4642	4724		5015
Sales to New Listings	35%	40%	40%		38%
Sales Projection	---	600	602
Months of Inventory					7.6

We won't hit last year's sales but listings are down to match,   Looks like MOI will be lower than last year again.

The 200

Comment madness?  No...

Amazing how interest rates have continued to come down and improve affordability. 

Carry on.