Vancouver January home sales down 55% from 2022
• The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said January home sales were more than halved from the year before and down 21 per cent from December.
The board said sales for the month totalled 1,022, a 55-per-cent drop from the prior January.
The number of homes that changed hands last month was also 42.9 per cent below the 10-year January sales average.
The board attributed the quiet month to mortgage rates, which have risen rapidly over the last year and weighed on homebuyer intentions.
It found the region’s composite benchmark price was more than $1.1 million, a 6.6-per-cent decrease over January 2022 and a 0.3-percent fall compared with December 2022.
The total number of homes currently listed for sale on its listing service is 7,478, a 32.1 per cent increase compared with January 2022 and a 1.3 per cent increase compared with December 2022.
On Wednesday, the Calgary Real Estate Board said January’s new listings fell to a level not seen since the last 90s as home sales declined 40 per cent from the year before.
The Alberta board said new listings for the month amounted to 1,852, a 25 per cent drop from January 2022.
Meanwhile, home sales totalled 1,199 compared with 2,004 in the January prior.
The board attributed the slowdown to higher lending rates that are causing many buyers to seek out lower-priced homes and preventing some from upgrading to other properties.
The average price of a home in the region hit $508,189 in January, a less than one per cent drop from a year ago.
However, the benchmark price of $520,900 was five per cent higher than January 2022.