Sales are up, and listings are down week over week in the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Find out what this means for prospective buyers and sellers on your Monday Market Monitor!

Welcome back, again, friends, to your Monday Market Monitor for Oct 24th- 30th, 2022. Today we unravel last week’s Real Estate numbers for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

We have a lot to talk about, so let’s dive right in with our new listings.
Last week our listings dropped to 840; this is lower than our 16-week average of 918. As we move toward the holiday season, remember it is November tomorrow, we will start to see the listings numbers dwindle. For most people listing over the holidays can be very stressful; however, listing over the holidays can be very beneficial since the buyer pool is still active, and in general, you have way less competition!

As for Expireds, we had 86 of those last week, which is right in line with our 16-week averages. So big snooze-fest for this number. And the same can be said about the price changes we saw last week.

There were 350 price changes last week, and some were pretty interesting. While most people understand that in a moderating and slowing market, if you have not had a successful sale and you have been on the market a while, you might want to rethink your pricing and marketing…well that was not true for ten properties last week. 10 of the 350 price changes thought that it would be a great idea to price their properties low when they listed to try to get multiple offers, and then when they did not get any, they raised their price to what they felt their property was worth.

This particular pricing strategy can be detrimental to the home seller and leave a bad taste for prospective buyers. Sellers are better off pricing appropriately for the market, ensuring that their agent understands who the ideal buyer avatar is for the property and marketing directly to them to drum up a successful sale.

The problem is this strategy takes a deep understanding of the market, buyer avatars, and where they consume their info, and honestly, it is a lot of work, so many agents won’t bother to put in that kind of effort.

Strategy is vital for sellers in this market!!!

Moving on to last week’s sales. We had 442 successful sales last week, which is more than the previous two weeks. Now some of you might be wondering how that is the case, given the rate hike by the Bank of Canada last week.
Great question!
As one might expect anecdotally, there were several agents pushing through deals for clients ahead of that rate hike, so we won’t see the real impact of the rate hike till next week.
But we are entering an interesting time. If we continue to see fewer listings coming to the market as we approach the holiday season and we still have an active buyer pool, the .5 rate hike may not have a massive effect, especially since the market had really priced in a .75 rate hike.
This is an area that I will be watching intently over the next couple of weeks.

Back to some numbers. Last week the DOM( median days on market for a successful home sale) hit 16, which is two more days to a successful sale compared to the previous week. So again, we are seeing properties that are priced appropriately coming to the market and selling quickly.

Now for my favourite number, the percentage of properties sold at or above list price. Last week 19.7% of the successful sales sold at or above the list price, which is still in line with the 17-week average, but I expect this to drop as we move toward the holiday season.

Interestingly enough, of the 442 sales, 230 of them, or 52% that sold, were under the million-dollar price tag, and 68% were attached or townhomes.
This, again, just shows the strength in the entry-level market that we have seen for weeks. So, sellers, I have said it before, but I will repeat it, this is still a great time to consider selling your condo or townhome and moving into that detached property you have always wanted.
And buyers, if you are searching at that entry-level price point, then you may already know that the good properties that are coming to the market are selling fast. So you should not assume that you have all the time in the world to make decisions. In fact, you need to be looking at those new listings daily and booking showings as they hit the market and not waiting.

Just one more thing.
I am not sure if it is for you, but if you want to have an in-depth conversation about the Vancouver Real Estate Market and how these stats will affect your fall home sale, then reach out for some expert advice.

Thank you so much for tuning in to your Monday Market Monitor, and we will see you in the next video.