Numbers released last week by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), which includes the Sunshine Coast, suggest the region’s housing market isn’t likely to cool off soon.
The figures put the median selling price for a detached home at $505,000 in May, the second month in a row that it’s been over $500,000.
There were 133 homes sold, bringing the January to May total to 517 – more than double the sales for the same period last year. Prices are up around 20 per cent.
The REBGV doesn’t track sales of vacant lots, but according to detailed Sunshine Coast statistics published by local realtor Gary Little, that continues to be one of the fastest growing segments of the area’s real estate market. Land sales were up 225 per cent compared to the first five months of 2015.
Little’s stats also show the total dollar value of transactions for all classes (land, attached homes, detached homes and manufactured homes) hit just over $105 million, after crossing the $100 million threshold for the first time ever in April.
The market is also moving faster than it has in years. Little’s statistics note a 36 per cent drop in the number of days it’s taking properties to sell.
As the sales numbers and prices have shot up over the past five months, market watchers have noted potential issues with a lack of supply, a negative impact on rental properties, and the need to ramp up housing construction.
UBC professor Tsur Somerville, an expert on real estate, told Coast Reporter that we could now be starting to see the kind of market conditions where “flipping” becomes more common.
Not the “shadow flipping” that made headlines in Vancouver, but the conventional kind where a buyer purchases a home and holds onto it as a short-term investment in the hope that prices go up.
“To flip a property, you have to have price increases high enough that they justify the cost of the transaction,” Somerville said. “We’ve had prices going up about 20, 25 per cent this last year. In that world, flipping makes a whole lot of sense. I think that’s a function of where prices are right now.”
