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October 2019 Vancouver Real Estate Statistics

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this week’s video Jamie takes a look at the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics for October 2019.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to talk about and answer the question, has the Greater Vancouver Real Estate market hit the bottom and is it on the way back up?

The October sales statistics have come in and they have shown October as being the busiest month of the year. Over 2,800 sales were recorded in the Lower Mainland in October, which is a big (22%) increase over September. It is a 45% increase over last October. October has been the busiest month of the year, which is kind of unusual.

The usual business pattern in Greater Vancouver has spring being the busiest time, from March 1st to say June 15th. That is typically when you will see the most sales happen. Then it slows down in July and August, and is usually busy again through the fall.

The market pattern over the last 12 months has been completely different. We were in a buyers market from November 2018 to April of 2019. For 6 months it was a pretty strong buyers market. From May through to September it kind of shifted out to a balanced market territory where there is an equal amount of buyers and sellers. If October holds strong, we are in a seller’s market again in a majority of the markets in the Lower Mainland.

So, what is causing this turnaround? Well, I am not an economist, and quite frankly I am surprised that this market is coming back at this time of year. What we can attribute it to is firstly, population growth and secondly, a housing shortage. There are 40,000 people that come to the Lower Mainland each year. Just going back to Expo in 1986, the population of the Lower Mainland was about 1.4 million people. By 2000 it was 2 million people and today we are pretty close to 2.8 million people.

By 2040 they say there are going to be 4 million people here. The city is landlocked. You cannot go south because of the United States; you cannot go west because of the Pacific Ocean, and you can’t go north because of the mountains. That used to only leave going east, but there are not many building lots as far as Abbotsford as much of the available land has been developed. That is why you see a lot of construction going up in the air. We can all talk about how we don’t like it and that Vancouver is changing, but that is just the way it is.

One thing I have noticed about the sales on the Westside of Vancouver for the past several months is that 75-80% of them have been below 2.75 million. In October, almost 50% of the sales were over 4 million. Over 30 properties sold for over 4 million. We haven’t seen that since before 2016 when the foreign buyer’s tax came in. Does this mean that we’ve got some people from Hong Kong coming in and buying up these expensive homes? I don’t know, but that was the first thing that came to my mind.

Also, inventories are decreasing. So when there is less selection, typically that causes a little more of a swing in the prices. From November through April we saw prices continuing to come down. From May to September, we saw them kind of levelling out. In October we actually saw them starting to creep up in a few markets.

Pent up demand may be another reason why the markets are getting busier. People haven’t been scooping up real estate as they have in the previous years. Low mortgage rates could also be a reason. You can get a 5-year mortgage rate at 2.5% for a fixed rate today.

Where is the market is going for the next 6 months? it will be interesting to monitor and see if November comes back strong again (which is a month where it typically starts to ease down into the Christmas time).

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Sept 2019- Vancouver Real Estate Statistics

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this week’s video Jamie takes a look at the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics for September 2019 and what it may mean as 2020 approaches.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

September was the 5th consecutive month that we had over 2,000 sales. If you want to put that into perspective, from November of 2018 through April of 2019 we did not go over 2,000 sales one time, which is really unusual as March and April are two of the busier months of the year.

What we are seeing now is that the market is not on fire, it is not taking off but is balancing itself out. Since the foreign Buyer’s tax came in over three years ago, the detached housing market has pretty much been a buyer’s market, except for the lower price points. Prices currently are not increasing and I am not saying the market is going great, but just that the market is now levelling off.

We are entering balanced market conditions. There are 3 types of markets, and it is based on the statistics. The statistics say that if more than 20% of the properties sell each month (1 out of every 5) that means it is a seller’s market. We have not seen many seller’s markets in the detached housing market for a few years now. If it is between 13% and 20% it is a balanced market. That means that there are an equal number of buyers and an equal number of sellers. If the sales are 12% or lower, it is considered a buyer’s market.

If it remains a seller’s market for an extended period of time, prices will rise. That is why we saw big increase in prices between 2013-2016. If it is a balanced market for an extended period of time prices will stay flat. That is what has happened to prices currently. They are not really declining like they were for the past few years where prices were slowly trickling down from August 2016 until the spring of this year. Now that we are entering balanced market territories they are flattening out. If sales are less than 12% for a continuous period of time, you will see prices decline and that is what we have been going through for the last couple of years.

So what is the outlook? The government has done everything it possibly could the last couple of years to slow the market down. They were worried that prices were out of control, and I can say from a realtor’s perspective it was scary for us too. Nobody wants the market to implode. What the provincial government did was to implement a Foreign Buyer’s Tax (which they raised after implementing) and they raised the Property Transfer Tax, Speculation Taxes, and added Mortgage Stress Tests. In Vancouver an empty home tax was also added!  I do not know many other places that could survive that much taxation and not implode.

All the people that were saying “Vancouver is a bubble market it’s going to explode”, are now saying it is now levelling off and it didn’t implode. So why is that? It is because the Lower Mainland is landlocked and 40,000 new people come here every year. There are currently 2.8 million people and they say there is going to be 4 million people by 2040 and there is nowhere for them to live. That, in my opinion, is why this market is now stabilizing.

My outlook for the rest of the year until spring will be more balanced conditions. I do not know that we are going to ever really enter seller’s market territories unless there is a change in Provincial Government. The current Government does not have a great history with the Real Estate Markets being strong. If that doesn’t get some negative comments on my page I do not know what will (for all the supporters of the current government).

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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6 Mistakes People Make When Selling Their Home

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie talks about the 6 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People make when Selling their Home.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to talk about the 6 dumbest mistakes, smart people make when they sell their home.

Mistake #1 – Picking a realtor that tells you that your house is worth the highest price. Let’s say you decide to interview 3 realtors, (which for the life of me I do not understand why people do that because we will all come at you with the same information), certain realtors may (in a competitive situation where the seller is interviewing multiple agents) tell you a price higher then they actually think it is going to sell for. I recommend you substantiate it with these realtors and ask why they are telling you your house is worth $100,000 more than the one down the block that just sold a month ago. Make sure that they can back it up, there could be a very good reason as to why or they could be “buying your listing”.

Mistake #2 – Not marketing your property online. Everybody puts your property on the MLS, but that is not necessarily marketing it. There are three critical things you need to do when you sell your home. Price, presentation and marketing; you need all three of those things. Your first showings are not when a person walks into your house anymore. Your first showing is online. More than 95% of homebuyers go online when they are looking for properties. You need to have beautiful pictures and you need to have your home priced properly. You want to make sure that your Realtor has an online presence with their website, that they are active with social media and they spend some money on professional photography and professional video to get your house sold.

Mistake #3 – Thinking that your tax assessment is the market value of your home. For a number of reasons, that is not correct. No one from the assessment authorities has ever been inside your home. Let’s say that you have done $200,000 of renovations and you are probably not going to march down to the taxman to tell him so that you can pay more taxes on your home. In this case, they wouldn’t have any idea of the renovations and your tax assessment would probably be too low. Conversely, if your house had been rented out for the last 20 years and shows poorly, it would probably be worth less than your assessment. In a rising market, and when assessments are done in July, you will not get the assessment until January, and if the market has changed the assessment will not be accurate. Do not mistake your tax assessment for an accurate reflection of the value of your home.

Mistake # 4 – Thinking that all realtors are the same. Here is an interesting statistic.  As of the end of June, there are 14,000 realtors in the Greater Vancouver Board. 10,000 of them have not sold one property this year. If I am going to sell my house, or I need a heart surgeon or a divorce lawyer, I want someone who is active in the marketplace. You may want to ask the realtor how many properties they sell, on average, on an annual basis. The reason that is important is because you want them to be competent negotiators and know what is going on in the marketplace. It always surprises me how many people take such little time when listing with someone, when it is one of the biggest transactions of our life.

Mistake # 5 – Thinking that you need a Cantonese or a Mandarin-speaking agent to sell your property because of the high population of Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking people around Greater Vancouver. This is not true because these properties are sold online. I do not speak to the buyer if it is a Mandarin or Cantonese buyer, they speak to their agent and I speak back and forth with the agent who speaks English.

Mistake #6 – Overpricing! You cannot get your house sold if it is overpriced. If your house is worth 1 million dollars and you list it at 1.2 million, and you get showings, do not get all excited. Those people can afford more than you have. Meaning you are bringing the wrong buyers into your property. The people that can afford more that are coming through and you do not stack up to the other properties that are listed at 1.2 million and worth 1.2 million when you are worth 1 million. The people that can afford 1 million will not be coming in because they think they cannot afford it. If you overprice your home you will not get the right people through the door.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Aug 2019 Vancouver Real Estate Statistics Video Post

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

This week Jamie takes a look at the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics for August 2019 and things appear to be leveling off.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

Click Here if you would you like to get the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics emailed to you every month? 

Below is a Video Transcription

The statistics for the month of August are in and the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board reports a list to sell ratio of 17% for August.

What this means is that we are in balanced market conditions. It means we have an equal amount of buyers and sellers in the market place. If the market continues like this for a prolonged period of time, what we will see is the market levelling off as opposed to the declining prices we have seen in the last 12 to 18 months.

The benchmark price for all properties in the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board was $993,000 for August. That is down about 8% over the last year. Prices are still declining, but it is not as dramatic as it was. They went down a little bit over the last couple of months, but as I said previously, if the balanced conditions continue, we will likely see a levelling off in prices.

There were 2231 sales in August. That is up 16% from the August 2018 numbers and it is still 9% below the 10-year average. Don’t forget that the 10-year average includes the period between 2013-2016, was astronomical period of increase,so that would skew that figure as well. Another interesting fact is that this is the 4th consecutive month that there were over 2,000 sales. The 6 months previous to that, from November 2018 to April 2019, we did not hit 2,000 sales once. March and April are typically the busiest months of the year, but this year, May to August has been our busiest months, which is really unusual.

All of these statistics do support the possibility that through the fall we may see things levelling off. I am sure by the beginning of next year some things will have happened to affect our markets in different ways.

The global economies seem to have slowed down, but it does not seem to have affected Canada yet.

There are currently 44,000 new homes under construction, which is a pretty significant figure. These homes are not so much being built in Vancouver where we are down to around 5,000 new housing starts. What will happen if new construction doesn’t show an upturn is that the trades will see a slow down in the area over probably the next 6-12 months.

The last thing that I want to talk about is the same drama I have been banging around for the last few years around here. When you listen to the media, they talk about how slow the markets are. In general, yes the markets are slow and the numbers are reflective of that in the last few months. But again, what I will tell you is that the low sides of the market are really busy. It seems to be the higher sides that are slow, and every market has a cut-off point.

42% of all the Downtown condos below 1.25 million sold last month. That means if you are selling a property under 1.25 million in downtown Vancouver, you are in an extreme seller’s market. Nobody reports that and you do not see it anywhere.

When you get above 1.25 million, there are 331 properties for sale, and only 20 sold. That means that only 6% above 1.25 million sold, and that is an extreme buyers market. Same geographic area, but completely different markets in the 2 price ranges.

24% of detached houses under 3 million on the Westside sold. There are only 150 of them for sale, but 36 of them sold last month. The Westside, which is supposed to be the most expensive Real Estate in Canada, and it is an extreme buyers’ market under 3 million. When you get above 3 million, the market is non-existent at 5%.

Westside condos and townhouses, up to 1.75 million, is a seller’s market. Eastside detached up to 1.5 million, seller’s market. The entire Eastside condo and townhouse market is a seller’s market. Richmond below 1.25 million is a seller’s market. Ladner detached below 1.25 million seller’s market.

These are some of the things that they do not talk about in the media, and for the life of me, I do not understand why.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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2019 Vancouver Real Estate Fall Outlook

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

This weeks video takes a look at how unrest in Hong Kong may affect the Vancouver Real Estate Market this fall 2019.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

Click Here if you would you like to get the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics emailed to you every month? 

Below is a Video Transcription

These last few months have been a little better around the GVRD than the previous 18 months. May was a pretty reasonable month. June trickled off a little bit, and July came back stronger and was the second busiest month for sales in a traditionally slow month. At this point, August is looking pretty good and we will see the numbers in the next week or so. All in all, the market has shown a bit of a pulse in the last few months. We do, however, want to have a little bit of a look ahead and see what is going to happen this fall.

There are three things that I think could have a positive impact on the market this fall. Number one is the civil unrest in Hong Kong, which is something for us to keep our eyes on. 300,000 people living in Hong Kong hold Canadian passports. If we said 1% or 2% of those people show up in Vancouver over the next 6-12 months that would bring three to six thousand buyers into our marketplace. That could have an effect on the market and is one of the things that we are going to keep a really close eye on.

Secondly, the Bank of Canada folks are going to be meeting in the next week or so to discuss interest rates.  Anyone I talk to who seems to be in the know about these things is telling me that there is a 50/50 chance that we could see up to a ¼ percent drop in interest rates.  This certainly would help the market as well.

The third thing that is going to be really interesting to watch is to see if anybody the major political parties tries to buy the millennial vote this fall by giving some kind of relief on the stress test. Apparently, millennials do not vote with any great regularity and a lot of political insiders seem to feel that either getting rid of the stress test or cutting it from 2% to 1% may help bring them to the polls.

All in all the market seems a little better and we could see a little uptake this fall. We will know better when we see the August statistics. If the August statistics are really strong then I think we could have a couple of better months than we have seen in the last little bit.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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2019 Greater Vancouver Real Estate Market Information

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

This weeks video Jamie provides a video overview of the current Greater Vancouver Real Estate Market Statistics. The stats do indicate a pulse!

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

For the last couple of years, one of the difficult things about doing these videos is coming in and saying the same thing over and over again about the market being slow. This month I actually have something different to say. The month of July was the 2nd busiest month sales-wise for real estate in the Great Vancouver Real Estate Board this year! It seems kind of unusual, as July and August are usually a pretty quiet time around here as when the weather gets nice people are usually out doing other things. The only people you see selling around this time of year are usually the people that have no choice but to sell due to things like job transfers, divorce, or death.

It is way too early to say that the market is picking up and coming back. May was a good month, then June slipped back to where it had been. July was quite strong, so we will see how the market reacts coming up in the fall. Typically, it is after Labour Day when the market does pick up. Overall, the Greater Vancouver stats are interesting. For detached houses, only 13.5% have sold during the month of July. What that means is that we are in the low end of a balanced market and bordering on a buyers market. Again, that is predominately the higher end.

When you look at the lower ends of the market, they are still busy and in a lot of cases seller’s markets. The townhouse market for July for the entire Lower Mainland was 20%. That is right on the border of being a seller’s market, and that includes the high end and the low end. The condo market for the entire area was 22%, which is a seller’s market, and the low ends are even stronger.

I am sure we are going to start hearing about these things in the media now, but they never seem to mention that it is the higher end of the market that is slower. We are starting to see a bit of a pulse develop here and whether it turns into a trend and keeps moving stronger through the fall remains to be seen.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Vancouver is Not A Bubble Market

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie explains why he believes the Vancouver Real Estate Market is NOT a “Bubble Market”.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

I want to explain to you why in my opinion this market is not a bubble market. I wouldn’t have said that 2-3 years ago when the government first rolled out all of their interventions. I had no idea, along with everyone else around here, what that was going to do the market. However, it has now been 3 years since the foreign buyer’s tax was implemented, and the detached housing market has been that slow for that long as well.

A couple of things tell me that this is not a bubble market. First of all, there are several parts of the market that are still a seller’s market and have remained sellers’ markets during this entire period since August of 2016. The Downtown condo market, Westside detached and attached, Eastside detached and condo market, Richmond and Ladner, are all seller’s markets on the lower end of the price range.

In the month of June, homes that have sold with multiple offers include 10 Downtown condos, 2 Eastside houses, and 5 Westside condos to name a few. In the 1990’s, when the markets were slow like this for an extended period of time, you never saw multiple offers on anything. It just did not happen and there weren’t that many buyers.

One of my points of contention here is that you wouldn’t see any multiple offers situation if this was a bubble market that was going to tank. The 2nd thing is that prices would have dropped a heck of a lot more in three years then they have dropped. When markets tank, as they did back in the early ’80s (which was long before I was even in Real Estate) they dropped almost 50% in a period of less than a year. That was a bubble market that burst. Things have changed a lot in Greater Vancouver since then. We have 40,000 people coming to the Lower Mainland every year and there is not enough housing. That is probably what still keeps this thing afloat. If we did not have the massive immigration, maybe this thing would have burst and we would have had some serious problems.

The houses that are selling, and selling quickly, are the houses that are priced properly and priced well. The houses that don’t sell quickly are the houses that are over priced and sitting on the market forever. I don’t care where you are in the Lower Mainland, if your property has been on the market more than 30 days at the current price, you are overpriced and that is why your home isn’t selling. It has nothing to do with your Realtor or with the market being slow.  It just means that your price is not attractive enough for buyers to want to put an offer in on your home.

In closing, I would like to say again, this is not a bubble market. If it were, we wouldn’t see the prices remaining reasonably stable and only having experienced modest declines.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Vancouver Real Estate Summary – July 2019

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie  breaks down the current Vancouver Real Estate picture for July 2019 and lets us know what the Vancouver press is not talking about.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

Vancouver Real Estate Update

Today we are going to talk about the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Market and give you an update on what many people are calling a bubble market.

After a slight rebound in the market in May things went back to where they’ve been for the last few years in the Greater Vancouver market in June. Sales were at a 19-year low and had not been that soft since June of 2000. The sales were 34% below the 10-year average for June, and that’s pretty much the way it has been for the last year to year and a half around Vancouver. What it means is that there is a lot of supply, and not a ton of demand for the higher side of the market. For buyers, it takes away that sense of urgency that they had when everything was multiple offers. They can now sit back, take their time, and cherry-pick through the best homes that they deem to be the best value. They are also in a position where they can write shockingly low offers on certain properties. I had an offer situation in May, where we received 6 offers on a property (and that doesn’t happen an awful lot nowadays, but it was priced well and it was a very nice house). Out of the six offers, only one of them was asking price. The other five were below the asking price and two of them were even subject to sale offers (which you just wouldn’t have seen if the market was really busy).

The higher end of the market is slow, but one thing we do not hear the media talking about is that the low end is still really busy. The Downtown condo market below $800,000 is a seller’s market. The Westside detached market below 2.5 million is a seller’s market. The Westside condo and townhouse below $700,000 is a seller’s market. Eastside detached under 1.75 million and Richmond detached under 1.5 million are seller’s markets. Richmond condo and townhouse market under $600,000, Ladner detached under 1 million, and Ladner townhouse and condo under $700,000  are all seller’s markets. We do not hear the media talking about that part. What they report on are the overall numbers. What distorts it is that the high sides of the market are so brutally slow that the overall numbers reflect these low figures.

What I have determined from this is that this is not a bubble market. If it were a bubble market, things would have tanked by now. The prices haven’t come off that much to where I feel that is correct to call it a bubble. Sales have been brutal for 3 years, things are off and they’re down, but I call it more of a market correction. All of the haters are going to say its just this realtor trying to boost things up one way or another, but it doesn’t make any difference to me; properties still sell one way or another. I am not here to advocate to get the market rolling as if I had the influence to do that anyway!

This is the time to buy real estate. It doesn’t make any sense to go out and buy it when there is a line up of buyers down the block and you’re going to get into multiple offer situations. Go back to 2008-2009 when the US banking crisis occurred, and I was saying the same thing, to buy when the market is slow. If you had bought in early to mid-2009, after the market had a year to soften, it would have been a great time to ride the market up as it did all the way until 2016 when it softened again.

What is the 6-month outlook for the rest of the year? We had a couple of opportunities earlier on this year where some things might have turned the market around. The election in Nanaimo earlier this year might have had an effect on the market if the Liberals had somehow won that seat and been able to force the NDP out of government. The stress test relief they have been talking about for 6-8 months could have an effect if they eliminate it or reduce it more than the small reduction they just made. The stress test has had a real effect on the market that people do not realize. Now with the upcoming Federal Election, it is hard to believe that not one of the Liberals or Conservatives will use that as an inducement to attract the millennial vote.

The other thing that may have an effect on the market, although it seems to have quietened up over the last week or two, is the Hong Kong situation with the political unrest. 300,000 Hong Kong citizens currently hold Canadian Passports and you have to figure that a lot of those people will be heading to Vancouver if the political situation worsened there.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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History of the Vancouver Real Estate Market 1994 – 2019

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie takes us through a brief Vancouver Real Estate History from 1994 to 2019.  He also points out some current market signals that may be indicators of where we are headed for the rest of 2019 and beyond.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

Click Here if you would you like to get the Vancouver Real Estate Statistics emailed to you every month? 

Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to take a little trip down memory lane and take a look at the Vancouver Real Estate market from 1994-2019. We might even speculate a little on where the market is going. We are going to go back the last 25 years and quickly talk about what’s happened in the market since then and where we might be going in the short term future.

Between 1994-2001, Real Estate Markets in Vancouver were pretty darn quiet. The rest of the market in Canada was booming but BC was being held back. We didn’t have a lot going on in the province and the political climate wasn’t really stable. It didn’t look really appealing, and that combined with the exodus of the Hong Kong Chinese in 1997, had an effect on the market until we got up to about 2001.

In 2001, two things happened to drastically influence our Real Estate market. In May of 2001, we had a Provincial Government change for the first time in 10 years. Literally, within a week the phones started ringing off the hook and the markets got a heck of a lot busier and continued to go straight up until about 2008 where we became victims of the U.S. banking crisis. The second event in 2001 was the terrorist attack of September 11,  which resulted in drastic interest rate cuts in the U.S. and Canada as well. This brought a flood of buyers into the market resulting in the crazy bidding wars and drastic price increases that continued right until 2008.

From approximately mid 2008-mid 2009, the markets were not very good, they came to pretty much a grinding halt. As things started to recover they again came back and pretty much went straight up until 2016. There was a little hiccup in 2012 for about a 6-12 month period, but straight up for the rest of that time.

In 2016, the Provincial Government came through with their taxation on foreign buyers. Foreign Buyers taxes, Empty Homes taxes, increased Property Transfer taxes, etc. For the last 3 years, the detached housing market around the city has not been very exciting at all. The condo market remained pretty strong for the next 2 years until the middle of last year when they started to slow down.

What has happened around here for the last 12 months, which a lot of people do not know, is that the lower ends of the markets are still pretty busy. It is the higher ends of the market that are just absolutely dead and it is very difficult to sell a home in that higher end. However, for a lot of people, in certain parts of the city and in certain parts of the market, it is still a seller’s market.

So where is the market going to go? Here are four interesting things that I know that could actually help this market pick up over the next few months and for the last part of the year.

Number 1, there is a possibility of lower interest rates again. The Bank of Canada says there could be some more interest rate relief in the next 60-90 days.

Secondly, it is a federal election year. I’m not trying to get political here, but apparently many millennials don’t vote. Either party is probably going to grab this and run with it on their platform, promising they will ease the stress test. This would be a big bonus for the millennials in helping them qualify for their purchases. Watch for that, as I bet it will be on somebody’s platform, if not both the major parties.

The 3rd thing is pent up demand. A lot of buyers have been waiting for a year or two to buy a property because they are waiting for the market to bottom out. The one thing I like to always tell people is don’t wait too long because there is only one way to know when a market has hit the bottom. How do you know when it’s bottomed? When it’s on the way back up!

I’m not saying these things are going to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. This summer could be the time if we saw the bottom of the market hit if some of these things come through.

The last thing I want to talk about is the political situation in Hong Kong. There is a lot of unrest there right now, which I am sure you have been reading about. The very interesting thing is that 300,000 citizens in Hong Kong hold Canadian Passports. It would take nothing for them to move back here, where they do not have to pay the foreign buyers tax. This could really give a jumpstart to the market for the latter half of this year if all of these things came through.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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One Realtors Canada Day Tradition

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie gives a behind the scenes look at his early morning, Canada Day tradition for the residents in East Ladner.

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Happy Canada Day Everyone!

We just wanted to share with you a video we did a couple years ago of our Annual Canada Dag Flag delivery to the residents of East Ladner. The South Delta Invaders Junior Girls Fast Pitch team helps us out with this, and here’s a behind the scenes look as to what goes on at 2 in the morning while we’re out there. I hope you get the chance to enjoy some of the festivities going on around town today and I also hope that you have a great Canada Day weekend!

This year we have the South Delta Invaders Rep B under 14 Girls Fast Ball helping us out. They are raising money to go to North Battleford Saskatchewan for a tournament and they’ve kindly offered us their services to us this year to get it done!

We’ve been doing this in East Ladner since the mid 90’s, and we just have a lot of fun with it. Looking down the streets and seeing row after row of red flags off into the distance, I think it looks beautiful and makes me proud to be a Canadian.

I’m Jamie Hooper with Remax, and on behalf of the South Delta Invaders Fast Pitch team and myself we would like to wish you all a happy Canada Day!

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Moving to Vancouver in 2019

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

Planning a Move to Vancouver BC? In this weeks video, Jamie discusses the 7 things you will want to know about Vancouver before moving there.

As a lifelong resident and expert realtor in Vancouver, Jamie understands the city very well and shares his thoughts.

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Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to talk about buying a home in Vancouver, and the 7 things you should know before doing so.

The first thing I want to talk about is why it is a good investment to purchase real estate in Greater Vancouver. Let’s talk about population growth and how the city has grown since the end of World War 2. In 1945, at the end of World War 2, there were approximately 450,000 people in Greater Vancouver. By the time the Worlds Fair got here in 1986, the population was 1.3 million people. By the year 2000, there were 2 million people and today there are 2.8 million. They say by 2040 the population will have reached 4 million. Why this is important to you is because Vancouver is a landlocked city, and now I will explain to you the investment benefits.

Vancouver is a landlocked city and what that means investment wise is that there is virtually no more developable land. You cannot go south because we are right on the U.S. Border. You cannot go west because you will hit the Pacific Ocean. And lastly, you cannot go north as you will hit the mountains. The only way, in years past, where developers could find more land was to typically head east and move farther from the city. However, now when you get out towards Abbotsford there is virtually no land left anywhere to develop. What we are seeing is a focus on increasing the density in the city by re-zoning of single-family areas into multi-family areas all over the Greater Vancouver District. From a lifestyle point of view, you might not like it, but from an investment point of view, it’s a great thing.

The 3rd thing you might want to know about is the mortgage Stress Test. The Canadian Government, around 18 months ago, wanted to tighten up the banking lending rules. They came up with a program where you actually have to qualify higher than the interest rate you are going to pay. As of today, at the time of making this video, the best 5-year rate that we can get is 2.99%. That is in actuality what you would pay for on your mortgage, but you have to qualify for that mortgage at 2% higher. You have to qualify at a rate of 4.99%. How does that affect a buyer in real life? First of all, let’s say that you have a $100,000 family income. You could qualify to purchase a $700,000 home, with 20% down. You would put $140,000 down and have a mortgage of $560,000. That is the most you could qualify for with an income of $100,000 per year. Prior to the stress test, you only had to qualify at 2.99%; you would have been able to buy a $900,000 property.  Your buying power is down by 22% to 23% of what home you can buy. That has definitely had an effect on the market around here for the last 18 months.

The 4th point would be the taxations on your purchases. There are some taxes in Vancouver and in BC that are unique to other parts of the country. The first one is the property transfer tax, which is on a graduated scale where the higher you go up the higher you pay. It is 1% of the first $200,000 of your purchase and 2% up to 2 million dollars. For instance, on a million dollar property, you would pay approximately $18,000. Once you get above 2 million dollars, the property transfer tax increases even more, with anything over 2 million dollars you will pay 3%. If you purchased a 2 million property you would pay $40,000 in taxes to the provincial government.

The other tax we have is the foreign buyer’s tax. Originally implemented in 2016, the foreign buyer’s tax was 15%, and today the foreign buyer’s tax is 20% for non-Canadian residents. Those are a couple of the big one you want to know about before purchasing.

The next topic I would like to touch on is leaky condos. This was a big problem and a mess all through the mid to late nineties all the way up to about 2005. What happened was, any building built between 1980 and 1999 had different building codes from today. The building codes simply weren’t strong enough to make these buildings water resistant. They had a lot of water ingress issues, and there were major problems. I have no idea of the exact figure, but probably more than 50% of the buildings built between 1980 and 2000 had problems down the road. Massive assessments were put on these buildings to pay for the repairs, as they were literally rotting away. You want to make sure that any building you purchase from that era has had an engineer report, so you can see if they have looked into any problems and have dealt with them. To this day, you can find a building built in this era that has never had an engineer come on to check. There are not many, but there are still some out there. Make sure if a building was built between 1980 and 1999 that you do your homework before placing an offer.

The 6th point I would like to talk about is assignment sales. Assignment sales have been a big deal around Greater Vancouver since the early 2000’s. The condo market has essentially gone straight up during that period of time. People would go in and buy 2, 3, 4, 5 units at a time, never intending on completing on them. They were buying them like playing the stock market, counting on them appreciating before they had to close. Let’s say I go in and buy 3 units in a building in 2015 knowing that the building is not going to be ready until 2018, and I put $100,000 down on each unit. By 2017 I am thinking “Ok, the market is up by 25%, I am going to see if anybody wants to buy my contract from me and pay me the 25% the market is up”. Lots of people did this, never intending on completing, selling the contract, making a profit and walking away. Now that has kind of changed. The condo and townhouse market, in the last 12 months, has not appreciated. It has either been flat or declining slightly. People with assignment sales are having a hard time selling them because they are trying to get more out of them but they are actually getting less out of them. That is something to really keep an eye on over the next few years to see what happens with all of these pre-sale condos.

The last thing you want to know about buying a house in Greater Vancouver is that this market may have bottomed out. I am not saying it has, I am saying it may have. There are some signs and indicators from previous markets that tell us this could be an excellent time to buy. I will leave that up to you decide!

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Real Estate News In Vancouver 2019

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie illustrates some positive indicators and signs he saw in the market last month.

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Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to talk about the current state of the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Market.

The good news is that the Greater Vancouver market showed some life in the month of May. Market activity and statistics were better than I have seen since last summer. It is way too early to say that the market is turning around as it could just be a blip but there are some interesting indicators that show signs that this market might actually be starting to turn around.

Here are some things that I know for sure. There is pent up demand out there for buyers and the reason I know this is because there have been 78 properties in the Downtown, Eastside, Westside, Richmond or Ladner areas that sold with multiple offers in the month of May.  The 1990’s were the last time we saw the market so dead for a sustained amount of time. During the 1990’s there were never multiple offer situations because there was just not as many buyers around. It is a different feeling this time and buyers are around. Since inventories have risen, the only properties that get these multiple offers are the ones that are priced very well and are considered great value by buyers.

A lot of these buyers are waiting around for the market to bottom out. But how do you know when the market has bottomed out? You would only know the bottom has occurred when it is on the way back up and you’ve already missed it!  It is impossible to predict and time “purchasing at the bottom”  and everyone wants the best value. What I will tell you is that house and condo prices have been the best they have been in years.

Three times in the last 20 years the markets have slowed down like this; in 1998/1999, 2008/2009, and 2012/2013.  In ’98/’99 and ’08/’09 there were over 20,000 listings at the peak. In 2012 and 2013 there were 17,000 to 19,000 listings. This time there is only 15,000 listings. What that means, is that when the market starts to turn around and new buyers enter the market, it won’t take as long to work off that inventory to change things back to a seller’s market. Again, I am not saying this market is turning around, I am saying there are some indicators that could make it look that way.

We also have interest rates that are at 2-year lows, which will help to some degree and may have impacted the market last month. We have a federal election this fall, and both the Conservatives and Liberals are after the millennial vote. You have to think that one of them, or both of them, in their platform will be talking about the stress test to make it easier for millennials to get into the market and to entice them to vote for them.

I want to talk about these multiple offers and market conditions that we spoke about earlier. On the Westside, the condo and townhouse market is busy and it is a seller’s market. 42% of the properties listed under $800,000 sold last month, which is an extreme seller’s market. On the Eastside, 32% of homes below $1,250,000 sold. The Eastside condo/townhouse/duplex market is just plain busy and is a seller’s market. In the Downtown condo/townhouse market was 28% for homes below $900,000. In Ladner, the entire condo/townhouse market is busy with 30% sold. The Richmond market conditions have been the slowest out of all the ones we have spoken about, with the under $600,000 at 23%.

For detached houses, it is the same thing. Westside May sales were 25% for homes under $3,500,000, which is a seller’s market, and you don’t hear the press talking about it! Eastside was at 30% for homes below $1,750,000, Ladner 20% for homes below $1,250,000 and Richmond 33% under $1,250,000. These numbers also tell me that there is pent up demand in the market.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Vancouver Real Estate Market is Dead

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video,  Jamie takes a somewhat brighter look at the Vancouver Real Estate Market. Summers Coming!

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Below is a Video Transcription

Today we are going to talk about two things, the current state of the Vancouver Real Estate Market and if you are selling your home, how you can get multiple offers on your property even in this slow market.

March was the slowest March on record since 1986. April wasn’t the slowest April on record, but the conditions weren’t a heck of a lot better. For the entire Greater Vancouver region, sales were down 29% from April 2018 – April 2019. Remember that April 2018 was not in great shape either. The April statistics for the April ten year average were 43% below the ten-year average. Market conditions are not great. We have rising inventories, and not because people want to abandon the market or run away and cash out, it just that nothing is selling. Homes are sitting on the market a lot longer, as if you kept buying food and loading up your refrigerator, but you weren’t eating any of it.

Let’s talk about how much prices have gone up and down over the last year. The benchmark price for the Westside of Vancouver for a detached house is down 13% over the last year. If your house was worth 2 million dollars last year, now it is worth about 1.75 million. The Eastside is pretty much the same and is down 12%. Ladner showed the smallest decrease with prices down about 4% last year. Richmond is down 12% as well. Those statistics are for the detached market.

Condo prices haven’t seen as much of a decrease because the condo market was still pretty good for the first 4 months or so of 2018 and then it started to slow down. Condo prices for the last year for the West side (which also includes Downtown) are down about 9%. Eastside is down 5%, Ladner 8% and Richmond 7%.

Again, I want to talk to folks who have their house on the market. It makes no sense to over-price your home in a declining market. Let’s say you list your home for 1.4 million, but it is really worth 1.2 million. After you have sat there for 3 months and you lose 3% in value, now your house that was worth 1.2 million is only worth 1.05 million. You will wind up chasing the market down. I see this all the time, and it is a constant problem. For most of us, our home is our biggest investment in life. When realtors come in and tell you “I think you should price your house at this”, there is an element of mistrust. Realtors are commission-based salespeople, and most people do not trust commission salespeople. I don’t trust commission salespeople, so I wouldn’t expect you to either. 95% of the homes on the market right now will not sell at the price they are listed for. The reason they will not sell is because many sellers are trying to get last years prices for this year. It does not work that way because we know the markets are declining and so does every buyer out there!

Knowing all of this, lets talk about some situations I have been in where I have had houses sell with multiple offers. The reason we are talking about my houses that have sold, is because I know the situation. I bet less than 5% of the houses on the market in the current market are selling with multiple offers. Why is that? I have six situations here and in all of these situations I had a relationship with the sellers, and they trusted me.

Last October, in Richmond Steveston area, there were a bunch of houses in the area listed for around 1.3 million and they had been on the market for 60, 90, 120 days etc. That was because in the spring of 2018 they had been selling in the 1.3 million range. So, these people 6 months later want to get the same price, but that wasn’t reality. With our seller we went and listed the place at 1.99 million and everything else was listed at 1.3 million. We got 6 offers on this property and we got $50,000 above asking price. We got 1.25 million and sold it in 3 days with 6 offers.

Another one was a home on Arbutus Street that we sold a few months ago.  We listed for 1.9 million and it sold for 2.1 million in 4 days. We got 11% above asking price there.

I just sold another property in Richmond last week on Glenbrook Drive. Again, same situation as the one last fall in Richmond. Everything was on the market for 1.35 million and was on the market for a long time with no sales since last fall. We were on the market for 6 days, had 5 offers and sold at asking price. When you have that many offers and sell at asking price, that tells you what the market value is. This one was a really nice house, totally re-done and maintained. These other houses listed $150,000-$200,000 higher were not nearly as nice and the market was speaking to these people. Now with our sale, they virtually have no chance of selling their homes at those prices.

Last year we had one in Ladner on the market for 20 days and we got 3 offers. As well as a condo Downtown that we had on the market for 7 days and received 3 offers. You can sell your home with multiple offers in today’s market!

Last touch back on the commissioned salespeople part I spoke about. I hate going in to clothing stores and having someone jump all over me and start showing me things. I want to walk around and see what I like, and then I will go and ask the salesperson myself for a size. Things have changed in real estate over the past 40-50 years. Once upon a time realtors were sales people. In todays world, we are digital marketers. Ones that are successful understand that we are digital marketers and know how to market your property properly online.

There are 3 key things to know when you are selling your home. Price – you have to price your home properly. Presentation – so that it shows nicely online. Marketing – knowing where to market your property and knowing what is going on in your neighbourhood. And actually the 4th key is choosing the realtor you work with wisely!

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Living in Vancouver Pros and Cons

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie talks about the Pros and Cons of living in Vancouver. If you’re looking to move to the Lower Mainland you will want to watch this.

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5 Things Good about Living in Vancouver

First of all, we are going to talk about the five things that I love about Vancouver. I am born and raised, I have been here my whole life, and I love this place. I want to share some things that I love about this city with you.

The first thing I love about Vancouver is Summer. There is no place in the world like Vancouver in the summertime. We are far enough north that it stays light out until around 10 pm from the middle of June until the middle of July. We get about 1-17 hours of daylight during that time, the sun is up by 5 am, and it is great. The city really comes along in the summertime, thanks to the winter being the exact opposite.

The 2nd thing would be the downtown core. When you travel to other cities in North America, the downtown cores are not that exciting. The downtown core in Vancouver is very unique as it is surrounded by beaches in most of the areas. Usually, downtown cores are industrial or all office, but Vancouver has a mix of business and residential. It is one of the most densely populated areas in North America, and the Vancouver real estate downtown is pretty darn pricey. There is great nightlife, fabulous restaurants, the Seawall where you can bike and run, and it is just an absolutely beautiful place.

The 3rd thing I love is the ethnic diversity. If you don’t like multicultural cities, Vancouver is not the place for you as there are tons of different ethnicities and nationalities. What goes along with that that I love is all the cultural events. There is Greek Days, Italian Days, Caribbean Days and everything you can think of goes on during the summertime around the city.

One of the other truly unique things is that you can go snow skiing, water skiing and go golfing all in the same day. You could do this probably from late April until around the middle of June. You could go skiing up at Whistler in the morning, and come back down and go water skiing in English Bay (you’d probably want a wetsuit still) and then lastly book yourself a round of twilight golf. I don’t know of many other places in the world where you can do that.

The last thing would be, the city as a large metropolitan area is safe. When my children were growing up, I lived out in the suburbs in Ladner and my son would not carry keys. He left my house open every day, for a period of 18 years and we never got broken into one time. That’s one of the other fabulous things that I love about the city.

5 Things bad about Living in Vancouver

Now let’s talk about the five things I don’t like about Vancouver. When the clocks change at the beginning of November, it starts to get dark by 4 in the afternoon around here, combined with torrential downpours. The weather will not be good around here from Nov-Feb, it gets dark early and rains a lot. You got to love those Vancouver days when you wake up, and it’s grey and dark, and it doesn’t really get light all day until the sun sets again. That is definitely one of the things that I do not like a lot.

The 2nd thing is that the taxi service around here is abysmal. The taxi service in the city is bad. City council will not let Uber in for some reason. That’s also one of the big things that I am not crazy about as well.

The 3rd thing is, is that my beloved Vancouver Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup! I am a tortured Canuck fan. I watched their first game when Barry Wilkins scored their first goal for the Vancouver Canucks back in 1970, and this will be my 50th year of this agony.

The next one is that the traffic around here is horrific. The population has doubled since 1986. It’s gone from about 1.4 million people to 2.8 million people. What used to take half an hour to drive somewhere takes 45 minutes to an hour now, so you have to be patient.

The last one I do not like, and you might find this odd coming from a realtor, but it’s the sky-high prices of Vancouver Real Estate. I am a father too, not just a realtor, and I have 2 daughters I need to get into the real estate market where they are either going to have to wait for me to die, or I’m going to have to pony up, or they will have to move to some other small town.

These are some of the things I do not like about Vancouver, but overall, there is a price to pay to live in paradise. Vancouver is the only city in Canada, where it does not snow most of the time. If it does happen to snow, the whole city comes to a grinding stop, and the rest of Canada thinks it is hilarious. I hope this gives you a little insight if you are thinking of moving to Vancouver and buying real estate.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Subject to Sale Offers Vancouver Real Estate

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie explains Vancouver Real Estate Subject to Sale Offers for Home Buyers & Sellers.

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Below is a Video Transcription

Subject to sale

Today we are going to talk about subject to sale offers and the pros and cons of them. Something is becoming more commonplace in the market today as we are starting to see subject to sale offers with more regularity over the past 5 years. The reason being, in a hot market you won’t see any. People do not have the time to write a subject into an offer to get their home sold in time. When the market is busy, someone else who doesn’t need to sell their home will come in before you and scoop you on that property. Now when the market is starting to slow down, we are starting to see some sellers accept subject to sale offers.

Let’s talk about this from two points of view. We will talk about it from the seller’s point of view, and then go back and talk about it from the buyer’s point of view. From the seller’s point of view, accepting a subject to sale offer really doesn’t cause you any harm because you are going to protect yourself. Let’s say John Smith comes in and is going to write me an offer on my home, subject to him getting financing from the bank, subject to him doing a building inspection and the third subject being subject to him selling his home. Now let’s say that he wrote the offer on April 1st and he wants 30 days to sell his home by Apr 30th.

So me as the seller, I decide to accept his offer, but I am going to put a time clause in there of 24 hours. And what that means, is that I am going to keep showing my house to prospective buyers. If one of those buyers decides to write an offer on it, we are going to tell them that “We have an accepted offer with subject to sale on this property, with a 24-hour shotgun clause on the property”. So if Bill Jones decides to write me an offer and I accept this offer, we are going write into the offer that me (as the seller) is going to be released from a previous offer I accepted on April 1st, within 24 hours. Then my agent will go back to the other agent who wrote the first offer and say that we are invoking our 24 hr time clause. That means those buyers will need to remove their subjects within 24 hours or the property will be sold to the other buyers. That is how you protect yourself as a seller and how it is no real disadvantage. You have no idea of what you don’t control, such as the subject to sale buyers, what if they over-price their home and have no hope of selling it by April 30th. That is the importance of that time clause.

From the buyer’s point of view, I can only think of one advantage for a buyer to write a subject to sale offer. That would be that you are going to remove the subject regardless because you like the home. Some buyers like to think that, “Oh, I’ve bought a house”, but no, in my mind you have made a promise to someone to buy their house, but only if you get your house sold. I do not really see it as being an advantage to a buyer. As a buyers agent, I can go in and negotiate a lot better if we are talking money now, then if you manage to get your house sold in this extremely slow market. What happens if another home comes on the market before you get your house sold, that you like better than the other one you put the offer on? Over the last 5 years selling your house was easy, finding your new house was difficult. Now that has all changed. Selling your house is now difficult, and there are 2-3 times as many houses on the market as there was before.

My advice is to sell your house first, then go in with a pocket full of money and talk to the sellers when you have cash on the table and can make them a good offer now.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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Vancouver Real Estate Statistics and the 2019 Bubble Market

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie covers a lot of ground.  Has the Vancouver Real Estate Market bottomed out? What happened in the Market last month and what you can do to sell your home for the best price in this bubble market.

Everything you need to know about Vancouver’s  Real Estate Market – 

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Below is a Video Transcription

Many years back, right after Ronald Regan got out office, I by fluke had the opportunity to hear him speak in May of 1988. One of the things he spoke about always stuck with me. He came on and said “The best part about not being president anymore, is now I can tell you exactly how I feel”. This is why I love doing these videos. It is of no benefit or advantage for me to not sit here and tell you the exact truth and tell you how I feel.

We are going to talk about March of 2019. The statistics that have just come out a few days ago show that the March sales total was the lowest March in 33 years, since 1986. Things were different in the ’80s. In March of ’86, interest rates were down to 11% for a 5-year mortgage at that point. They had reached a high in June of 1981, just a few years earlier, of 21.75%. Imagine that. That was kind of the mood of the market, and the market was still recovering from the crash in the early ’80s.

You’ve been reading and seeing that we have the worst number we have seen in decades, but there is some good news to these numbers once you’ve dissected them and read through them. Many homes are still selling quickly, and selling with multiple offers. Now how can that be, when the market conditions are so terrible? I just want to go through some of these statistics with you first to help you understand. Let’s start with the list to sell ratios. The real estate market says, if more than 20% of the homes sell, it is a seller’s market, which we saw for detached houses in 2012-2016 and pretty much everywhere in the Lower Mainland. They were all above 20%, and even 40% ,50%, and upwards of 70% in some areas. Now, the stats for Ladner for March are 9%, East Vancouver and Westside are 7%, and Richmond is 5%. That gives you like a 1 in 15 or a 1 in 20 chance of getting your house sold each month. However, when you go in and look a little deeper, there have been 11 houses on the Eastside of Vancouver, during the first quarter, that sold with multiple offers. There were 18 on the Westside, 6 in Richmond and none in Ladner.

How is it that some of these people sell right away, and some of them sit on the market forever? That’s what I would like to try and help you understand today. Let’s take these numbers a little further. Of the 11 houses that sold on the Eastside of Vancouver with multiple offers, they also only took, on an average, 17 days on the market to sell. There have been 133 houses sell on the Eastside, so 11 out of the 133 (about 8 or 9%) sold with multiple offers. These ones sold in 17 days. The average house on the Eastside took 44 days to sell. Almost all of the ones that took 44 days to sell all sold below their asking price.

There are a million buyers out there right now.

The buyers can sit back and pick out the prime gems of the properties that they want to purchase. It’s not like before the foreign buyer’s tax came into play, that when you went into a house, you had to make a decision pretty much right away. Over the past week, I have had 2 groups come back for second and third viewings at 2 of my listings and I never saw an offer out of them after they viewed it 3 times! Another 3 or 4 groups came 2 times, and I also never saw an offer out of them. Buyers have no sense of urgency until they see the right listings.

There was a house on the Eastside of Vancouver, back in January that received 43 offers and sold 40-50% above the asking price. This tells me that there are lots of buyers out there. That’s what these multiple offers on the right listings tell me as well. 18 houses on the Westside have also sold with multiple offers. There are lots of buyers out there and at some point something is going to motivate them to start buying which will turn the market around. There is talk about the stress test being reduced to maybe 1% or even being done away with altogether. Also, there are talks of interest rates being dropped when the bank of Canada meets on the 24th. So the combination of those two things could jump-start the market.

Another thing interesting about the statistics: The Eastside of Vancouver (at the time of filming this video) has 652 houses for sale. Westside has 689, Richmond has 833 & Ladner has 111. These are all almost double the usual spring listing count. Inventory is rising and there are way fewer sales so that obviously has an impact and that’s what takes the pressure off of buyers. What’s really interesting, is that 90% of the homes on the market everywhere, are not going to sell at the price they are currently listed at. How do I know that? It is by looking at the average days on the market in each area.

The Eastside was 44 days, with the median days being 18. Of the 652 listings, 90% of them have been on the market longer than the median and the average. So unless they drop their price, they are probably not going to sell. The bulk of sellers have not accepted the new reality. They want to get 2016’s price for their home in 2019, and that’s not going to happen. The people who are accepting reality are the people who got multiple offers on their home. They priced their homes in accordance with today’s market, and some priced even a little under. Those sales are showing us that there are buyers out there.

I have 3 listings here from the Eastside that I just pulled out, and these are the 3 worst-case scenarios, which are going to be my example today. One has been on the market for 974 days. They were originally listed for over 5 million, and they’ve raised their price actually during this 974-day period. This makes absolutely zero sense. Their house has probably de-valued 15-20% during that time and they are still asking that price. The next one is a house that has been on the market for 358 days. They are listed at the same price that they were a year ago. The market has gone down 12% in the last year, so they’ve lost $150,000 in the value of their home, yet they continue to list at the same price. Finally, the 3rd one has been on the market for 341 days and it’s been on the market at the exact same price. These people are not listening to what the market is telling them. The market is telling them that we are not going to accept it at that price.

I also want to talk about how a realtor looks at a listing, and how a member of the general public looks at a listing. Let’s say my buyer Joe Smith says, “I would like to see this listing”. The first thing I do is go on the MLS and I pull it up. I don’t look at the price, which is the first thing a buyer probably would look at. The first thing I look at is the days on market.  I know that the average selling time is 44 days, and I see that this has been on the market for 341 days. Then I look at the current price and see it’s at $1,500,000.  I then look at the original price to see if it has dropped at all. I want to know if there is any motivation level with this seller who has had their home on the market for a year. I already know the answer. There probably isn’t any since they are listed at the same price.

I am definitely not interested in showing it to my buyer, and I am going to explain that to the buyer beforehand. The seller is probably very flush and stubborn. Why don’t I want to show it to my buyer? My buyer is going to get disappointed. If the listing is worth $1,200,000, they are listed at $1,500,000 and we write an offer for $1,100,000, the seller is not going to be interested and my buyer will end up being upset with me. It is always the buyer’s agent’s problem. So I definitely do not want to disappoint my buyer. Most times realtors do not have contracts with buyers, and if we don’t have a contract with a buyer and they are disappointed then I have lost someone who wants to buy real estate.

I am explaining all this to sellers, to try and show them how to get inside the realtor’s mind. Nowadays when we market your home, we are more or less marketing to the realtor’s, then to the general public. We want to get the realtors excited about selling your home. You are not going to get realtors excited if you have an over-priced listing. Realtors want to sell homes that have recently come onto the market, are priced fairly, and they know it is not going to be a blood bath during the negotiations.  They want to know they are going to be able to get their buyers a home in which they consider to be good value.

The seller controls the flow of traffic going into the home, not the realtor. How can that be? Well, that is because 80% of the job of marketing your home is done through pricing. There are 3 things that are important: price, presentation, and marketing. I give the price 80%, presentation 10%, and marketing 10%. When you price your home aggressively, at market value, or maybe even a little bit below market value, then you’re going to get other realtors and buyers excited to show your home. When you’ve been sitting on the market for 356 days at the same price, this is not going to excite anyone to show your home.

What happens typically with homes that have been on the market a really long time is that people start to grumble and say, “My realtor is not doing his job, he’s not getting my home sold”. Well, the home is on the Internet because the MLS is on the Internet. The whole world knows your house is for sale at that price. And what the whole world is telling you is that they are not interested in this price. Let’s say I was going to sell my car on craigslist, and I’ve had my car on craigslist for 6 months and its not selling. I get frustrated with myself that it’s not selling and I ask my friend Randy to put it on Craigslist at the same price.  Does it make any difference? No, it doesn’t matter who posts it on the Internet, it is the exact same thing. All 7 billion people who have access to it are telling you they are not interested. If you are changing agents, change your price at the same time. In defense of real estate agents, it’s probably not their fault (well maybe it is because they didn’t have the courage to tell you that you overpriced your house), but that’s why your house isn’t selling.

That is all the bad news. Let me throw you a bone and give you a little bit of hope here. There is an abundance of buyers out there who just need something to kick-start themselves. We have the possible stress test relief, possible interest rate drop, and the fact that Vancouver real estate has been good to a lot of people over the last decade and they have made a lot of money buying and selling real estate. I think that there are a bunch of buyers who want to make some more money and all they are doing is waiting for this market to bottom and I think we could potentially see things pick up around here.  I want to leave you with one more closing thought by a very intelligent moneyman named Warren Buffett who said, “Be fearful when others are buying, and be buying when others are fearful”. When the financial meltdown came along in 2008 with the US banking crisis, the DOW was at 8,000 points and lots of smart people I know were buying in at 8,000 points and got their money back when it was up in the 20,000 range. It doesn’t make any sense to want to buy when the market is hot and on the way up! You want to buy when the market is low.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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5 Vancouver Real Estate Myths

Jamie Hooper Real Estate Agent

In this weeks video, Jamie explains 5 common Vancouver Real Estate Misconceptions.

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Below is a Video Transcription

Misconceptions

Today we are going to talk about 5 common misconceptions about selling your home in a bubble market.

Misconception #1: Thinking that if you hang in there for a long period of time, that you are going to get your price for your home.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “Jamie I’m not in a hurry to sell my house”, I’d be a pretty wealthy man. Whenever I hear someone say that, it usually comes true later on, that this person is not going to get exactly what their home is worth today they are probably going to get less and here is why. If you overprice your home in a rising market, you might eventually get your price down the road, depending on how long it takes the market to catch up with you. However, if you do that in this type of market, all you are going to do is cost yourself money. I’ve seen houses that have been on the market for over a year, and are listed at the same price they were a year ago. If we use the Westside detached market, for instance, it is going down a point and a quarter or a point and half a month, and is down 12% over the last year. So if your house was worth $2,000,000 last year, and you listed it at $2,200,000, well now your home is worth $1,750,000!  In a declining market, you’re costing yourself money by overpricing.

Misconception #2: Thinking that realtors control the real estate market.

If I were able to control and manipulate the real estate market, I would be doing something else. I wouldn’t be selling real estate and I’d probably be one of the wealthiest people in the world if I had the ability to do that. Real estate works on supply and demand and nothing a realtor does will alter that fact.

Misconception #3: Thinking that changing agents just for the sake of changing agents will get your home sold.

Let us say that you’re a person who has been on the market for a few months and you are not getting any activity on the home. Well here’s something that most people have no idea about. You as the seller control the flow of traffic into your home, not the realtor. How could that be? Well, the realtor is responsible for showing the property, but what is the most important thing you do to get traffic through your home? Your price. If you are not getting any traffic through your home and you decide that your realtor is not doing their job and you replace him and you put your house on the market at the same price, with a new realtor, well that is not going to fix your problem. You are just going to have the same problem with a different person. Think about it logically. If your listing is on the internet, which every person in the world can access and see, and you are not getting any traffic through your home, what is the difference if I post it on the internet or a realtor down the block posts it on the internet? It’s not going to make any difference. What is going to make the difference is the price, presentation, and the marketing. Changing for the sake of change, at anything, usually doesn’t change the results.

Misconception #4: Thinking that certain realtors have big magical lists of buyers that when you list with them these buyers will come to your home.

This isn’t true and it is such a common line that it drives me crazy. If you think about it logically, how could any one person have more buyers than the Internet can supply you? If you and I went and invented the widget tomorrow and we wanted to market it, we would not go and find one guy with a list of buyers, we would want to market it on the Internet to all the buyers. Even if a realtor has a list of buyers, with the rule changes last spring, they cannot bring their buyers in to write an offer on your home as the listing agent. They cannot represent both parties in a transaction anymore. It may have made a big difference back in pre-MLS days in the mid-’60s. Then it did matter because the listing realtor was the only ones that could sell your home, but that was 55 years ago.

Misconception #5: I messed up and talked about misconception #5 already in misconception #3, but let me re-iterate it! Thinking your realtor controls the flow of traffic into your home. You control the flow of traffic by the realtor you choose and the price you put on it! It is your responsibility by pricing your home to control the flow of traffic into your home. The only way to increase it, if you are not getting anyone through, is to adjust your price.

Buying or Selling a home in the Greater Vancouver Area contact Jamie Hooper and his team at https://jamiehooper.com | Vancouver Real Estate

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