Vancouver home sales down 5.6 per cent last year, prices slide
Real estate prices see a 17.8 per cent slide over same month in 2015
A
high-angle view of Vancouver’s False Creek real estate as seen from the
Fairview Slopes neighbourhood, Vancouver, B.C., February 24, 2016.
(Bayne Stanley/CP)
VANCOUVER — Home sales in Metro Vancouver
dropped by 5.6 per cent in 2016, the city’s real estate board said
Wednesday, wrapping up a tumultuous year in one of the country’s most
watched housing markets.
The composite benchmark price for all
residential properties in Metro Vancouver, as measured by the Multiple
Listing Service home price index, fell to $897,600 in December. That’s a
17.8 per cent slide from the same month the previous year.
“It was an eventful year for real estate in Metro Vancouver,” board president Dan Morrison said in a statement.
“Escalating prices caused by low supply and strong homebuyer demand brought more attention to the market than ever before.”
Residential property sales in the city
started the year off strong, sometimes hitting record highs. But partway
through the year the market started to cool, with sales and eventually
prices declining.
The cooling came as a number of measures
were implemented in an effort to address home affordability concerns in
Vancouver, including a 15 per cent tax for foreign buyers and a tax on
homes left vacant.
“As prices rose in the first half of the
year, public debate waged about what was fuelling demand and what should
be done to stop it,” Morrison said.
“This led to multiple government
interventions into the market. The long-term effects of these actions
won’t be fully understood for some time.”
There were 39,943 detached, attached and
apartment properties sold in the region last year, down from the 42,326
sales recorded in 2015.
Despite the decline in the number of homes sold, 2016 was the third-highest selling year on record, behind only 2015 and 2005.
Last month, residential property sales totalled 1,714, a 39.4 per cent decrease from the 2,827 homes sold in December 2015.
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