City home sales fell nearly 40 per cent in January

Vancouver’s once red-hot housing market continued to cool last month as the number of home sales fell to the lowest level seen in January in 10 years.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says 1,103 homes were sold in Metro Vancouver last month, down 39.3 per cent from the same month a year earlier.

Month-over-month, January home sales were up 2.9 per cent versus December 2018.

The board says last month’s home sales were 36.3-percent below the 10-year sales average for January, and the lowest January sales figure recorded since 2009.

The composite benchmark price for a property, which includes detached properties, town homes and condos, dropped 4.5 per cent from a year ago to $1,019,600.

Sales of detached homes fell 30.4 per cent year-overyear, while the benchmark price pulled back 9.1 per cent from January 2018 to $1,453,400.

The benchmark price of an attached home last month dipped 0.3 per cent year-overyear to $800,600, while the benchmark price of a condo fell 1.7 per cent to $658,600.

The board says home prices across all property types have fallen over the region in the past seven months, pressured by the federal government’s mortgage stress test that tightened home-buying rules last year.

“This measure, coupled with an increase in mortgage rates, took away as much as 25 per cent of purchasing power from many homebuyers trying to enter the market,” said the board’s president, Phil Moore, in a statement.