Home sales across the north continued to plunge in August.
Last month, 346 homes came off the market, a substantial drop from the 488 unit sales posted in August of 2021.
BC Real Estate Association Chief Economist, Brendon Ogmundson told MyPGNow.com that’s a decline of almost 30%.
“In the north and in Prince George, unit sales were down about 29% year-over-year. Generally, what we are seeing across the province is that sales came down pretty sharply over the spring and summer but are starting to stabilize now.”
Ogmundson added the higher mortgage rates impacted the housing market sooner than anticipated.
“And the difference in what we expected and what has occurred is the speed on how high rates and how fast they got there. With a five-year fixed mortgage rate at 5.2% and probably headed somewhere around 5.5% with variable rates we are probably going to finish the year at 5.5%.”
In addition, the housing supply is slowly improving in our region but it’s not quite at a sustainable level.
“It’s going to take a really long time to get back to normal levels. Across the north, we are at a little over 15 hundred listings, but we will need to be closer to 25 hundred listings for things to be kind of normal,” added Ogmundson.
“We are still a long way from there.”
Despite the drop in sales, PG saw a 15% year-over-year price increase for single-family homes, double the regional spike of 7.5% ($429,491).