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So May saw a small increase in detached home sales in West Vancouver compared to Last May. However it is still well down in terms of volume of sales compared to previous Mays.
There were some good high end sales including 4112 Burkehill, which sold in one day for $7,300,000, $200,000 under its list price. Even though the location was unusual for a sale of this scale, the house was 7,000 sq ft of exceptional quality in terms of build and had all the bells and whistles and took us to the $1000 per sq ft mark. By comparison the other highest sale, 718 Southbourgh which sold for $6,398,000 had been on the market since June 2012 and started at a price of $7,980,000.
Of the 50 sales, 19 sold below their assessed value but not by much, one sold over asking and the $7.3 million dollar sale on Burkehill was $3+ million over assessed value and three others in the higher end sold $1+ million over assessed.
There were price reductions but not by much as everything else sold within 5% of asking except for a couple which sold 10% below asking.
On Balance, my assessment is that though we are way down in Volume and have a very high inventory, we are not seeing the correlating price reductions that many people feel should be happening. This is in part due to a lot of the inventory being made up of old listings as opposed to brand new listings and it is those old, over priced listings that are skewing the real picture. Price have come down but not hugely and anything priced well is selling quickly, even at the very high end.
I see the market continuing to be slow and prices going no where in the foreseeable future, with interest rates this low there is however, in my opinion, no the climate for any kind of crash as some people seem to think may happen. Plus with the Canadian Dollar being so safe and Vancouver continuing to be highly sought after as a lifestyle city, buyers from overseas will continue to come over and buy our real estate both as an investment and as a place to live and educate their children.
As always if you have any questions or require any help with anything to do with Real Estate please don’t hesitate to contact me.