Northern BC continues to buck the trend when discussing home sales.
According to the BC Real Estate Association, over 460 units were sold in October, up from the 412 mark at the same time last year.
“Provincially, we’re seeing sales are down about 26% in October compared to a year ago, whereas it is a 12% increase in the north this year and during that time market conditions are a little bit tighter than they were a year ago,” said Cameron Muir, Chief Economist.
Not only that, but the average home price experienced a healthy spike in October reaching over $308,000 eclipsing last year`s mark of $249,000 thousand dollars.
However, Muir isn’t quite convinced the new home price will stay where it is.
“That has to be taken with a little grain of salt as the thought will be some higher-end homes were sold in October relative to other periods. BC Northern year-to-date is up around seven percent and I think that average price statistic can isolate from month to month and for October I think it is skewed a little bit high.”
He also expects the north to be relatively strong to wrap up 2018.
“I think there is some renewed optimism especially closer to the coast with the LNG project going forward and I think that is positive for those markets.”
The tighter conditions mean less active listings with over 2,000 available last month, compared to 2,200 listings in October of 2017.
The average home price in BC for October was 690-thousand dollars, down four percent from the same time last year.