This Spring was one of the strangest and most difficult periods we have gone through, both personally and professionally. Our lives have been forever changed from the recent health concerns and out of this has come a tremendous amount of gratitude for our friends, family and community. Our business life has been anything but normal and we have adopted new measures to help our clients navigate through the most challenging situations. Our health care and essential workers have become the unsung heroes in our day to day lives. After a pause in our market in March and April, real estate has resumed in full force.
We have seen trends emerging as home buyers and sellers reprioritize their lifestyles and needs for their families moving forward, with a shift from clients wanting turnkey condos with abundant amenities and common spaces, to wanting spacious outdoor areas and private entrances to their homes. Emerging from these changes has been strong demand for ½ duplexes, townhomes and detached houses. The biggest uptick in the market is for 1000+ square foot townhomes, 1500 + ½ duplexes and relatively affordable detached homes. This has created strong demand and little supply in these markets especially between $1,500,000 – $3,000,000. Our developer clients are shifting away from condos and into creating density within single family home neighborhood zonings. The City of Vancouver’s Multi Conversion Dwelling incentives on pre-1940 character homes and the ability to create ½ duplexes on RS zoned lots are welcome changes to our city. We expect other municipalities like Burnaby and the North Shore to follow suit.
Home buyers and sellers have gradually become more active in each month of the COVID-19 period. In June, home sales and listing activity in Metro Vancouver returned to more typical levels.
The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that residential home sales in the region totaled 2,443 in June 2020, a 17.6 per cent increase from the 2,077 sales recorded in June 2019, and a 64.5 per cent increase from the 1,485 homes sold in May 2020.
The total number of homes currently listed for sale on the MLS system in Metro Vancouver is 11,424, a 23.7 per cent decrease compared to June 2019 (14,968) and a 15.1 per cent increase compared to May 2020 (9,927).
Even though we have resumed Open Houses with safety protocols in place, many real estate transactions are being facilitated virtually and through private showings. Before considering an in-person showing, we are pre-qualifying buyers more thoroughly and utilizing technology to help buyers do their research and narrowing down their desired properties prior to in-person showings.
With increasing demand and lower supply, we have begun seeing multiple offers for homes priced competitively for today’s market. The MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver is currently $1,025,300. This represents a 3.5 per cent increase over June 2019 and a 0.3 per cent decrease compared to May 2020.
Sales of detached homes in June 2020 reached 866, a 16.1 per cent increase from the 746 detached sales recorded in June 2019. The benchmark price for a detached home is $1,464,200. This represents a 3.6 per cent increase from June 2019 and a 0.5 per cent increase compared to May 2020.
Despite the difficult circumstances, we have remained remarkably busy and have sold over 50 homes year to date. This has placed us 4th out of nearly 14,000 real estate members. I couldn’t be prouder of our team’s accomplishments and have immense gratitude for our clients’ continued support and trust in us.
Our clients have achieved extraordinary results this year and the graphic below shows how our client’s properties have sold quicker and for more money compared to the market averages:
We held our grand opening of our new storefront at 6158 East Boulevard in Kerrisdale over this past weekend. It was a great turnout and was so nice to connect with our clients and friends again in person. We want to thank my nephews Benjamin and Oliver Abro who helped serve as well as Tacofino who grilled up hundreds of tacos in 30-degree heat.
If you would like to discuss your real estate needs, whether they are buying or selling, we would love the opportunity to meet with you to discuss your unique situation and show you how we consistently outperform the market, regardless of the market conditions. Feel free to give us a call to stop by our office anytime and we look forward to seeing you.
Kind regards,
Patrick, Devin, Jenny, Matt and Susan
Patrick Weeks Real Estate
