Higher mortgage rates continue to slow the pace of home sales in northern BC to a crawl.
According to the BC Real Estate Association, home sales have dropped 44% on a year-over-year basis.
Our region tallied only 263 unit sales last month – a far cry from October of 2021 when 470 homes came off the market.
Chief Economist, Brendon Ogmundson told Vista Radio while active listings have increased by 24% in the past year, it’s only a slight improvement after reaching near-record lows previously.
“We are still at very, very low levels of inventory and we will see if they start to accumulate but that’s probably not going to really take place until the spring of 2023, we are at the point of the year where listings trend downwards.”
“Active listings at this time last year were approaching an all-time low in basically every market including the north. They are up but the interesting part is in most markets they are starting to really flatten out at around pre-pandemic levels.”
Currently, there are 1,759 active listings in the north – at this point last year there were only 1,423.
Ogmundson mentioned low inventory levels as well as the rising interest rates from the Bank of Canada inventory continue to create the perfect storm – scaring off a lot of first-time or potential home buyers.
“We are at a point right now in kind of the timeline of the housing market where sales are very slow compared to a very strong 2021 at this time last year. This is no surprise as I think we will be in this type of market for a while.”
“You have to qualify right now on a mortgage between 7.5 and 8% and that is going to keep a lot of potential buyers sidelined for a while so I think we are in for some pretty slow activity probably all through 2023 – we might see an uptick in the second half of next year.”
Year-to-date, Northern BC has recorded 38 hundred unit sales, a slight decline from the 4,813 homes that were sold as of October 2021.
The average price of a home in the north is just over $404,000 – it remains quite a bit higher in PG at 485 grand.
Province-wide, the average house price is a shade under $933,000, a decline of 3.1% when compared to 12 months ago (October 2021).