Monday, July 5, 2010

Some Honey for the bears

The benchmark is out and it shows enough divergence for both bears and bull to be able to toot their horns.

Benchmark is down. So was the average SFH BTW. But a few big sales skew average, so benchmark is even more reliable IMHVO.

Here is the whole package from Mike Stewart's site:


Nothing too dramatic. House prices have stalled and we are now waiting for the next move. No crash. No run-up. Just treading water. Maybe Chad will be right and we just stay here for two years.

A few comments:

Looks like the specuvestors have left Squamish. West Van is now down for the last three years on attached and detached and Maple Ridge is also down over the last three years.

Once again, nothing too dramatic. The market has definitely moved into a different place, with MOI in the 6's, prices stable at best and a huge swathe of listings pulled off the market...

RE moves at glacial speeds. 2008 was an anomaly, a once in a life-time event. The denouement of speculation, which was quickly aborted by the governments coming to the rescue of their pay-masters.
Here are some excellent graphs, as always, from Mohican:



3 comments:

  1. In the US, things stalled for a couple years. Not much happening. Not many sales, but no dramatic price decreases. Then, it seemed like it crashed overnight. I wonder if that will happen here.

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  2. I must agree that we wont see price changes at the 2008 level. MOI is not increasing as fast as 2008. This is a combination of higher sales and lower inventory.

    Still, it will be interesting to see what happens when the media stories of a slow RE market really get out. Right now I think most people still think that selling a house is as easy as list, open house, offers! (1,2,3)

    I did talk to a family friend trying to sell a place in north Van who pulled it off the market. Interest was there but there werent any offers. She said once it sits on the market for a few months people start to think something is wrong with it.

    I was tempted to say there was, it's overpriced, but kept my mouth shut.

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  3. I am not sure we wont see prices at 2008 levels. In fact i think we will at some stage, just not as fats and furiously as 2008 unless we get another financial armageddon.

    To correct you though. This is lower sales and lower inventory and stable prices. The inventory went down because of listings being taken off the market and less coming on rather than a jump in sales.

    Agent Will's graphs demonstrate this well.

    ReplyDelete