REAL ESTATE
Expectations for 2017
For Grace Kwok, co-owner of Anson Realty, Lunar New Year is all about new beginnings, a new start. “It’s like when you rewind something or reboot — like your cellphone, when you close it down and restart it, it seems to work better,” she says with a laugh.
A new beginning will no doubt be welcomed by many, following what was generally considered a real estate roller-coaster in many segments of the Metro Vancouver market last year.
As one of B.C.’s leading real estate experts notes, activity was anything but uniform in 2016.
“I think overall, sales activity has certainly waned from the peak that we saw in the first quarter of 2016,” says Cameron Muir, chief economist of the B.C. Real Estate Association. “Of course, home sales were at a record level at that time. Since then, we have seen consumer demand wane, which is not surprising considering the level of activity that we had in the first quarter of last year was not going to be sustained.”
When it comes to 2017 — the Year of the Rooster — Muir expects some prevailing uncertainty to cause prices to continue to decline over the next six months, and anticipates an upswing by the end of the year.
“I think going forward, we are likely to see some entrenchment on the financial side by millennials. There is a very large cohort of millennials just entering their homebuying years. While they may have been delayed from buying, it is not going to stop them from buying over the next year. If we look over the next several years, we are going to see quite strong demand on that first-time buyer front just from simple demographics alone.”
In the Year of the Rooster, in the tradition of the 12-year cycle of Chinese zodiac signs, millennial buyers might want to be alert, ready to take action, take risks, and always be prepared and persevering in their real estate aspirations. Similarly, people who follow the rules of feng shui may want to position their beds, desks and other furniture facing east, and be mindful of wearing red clothing to ward off evil and bad luck.
Kwok maintains she is not superstitious, eschewing those who are obsessively guided by feng shui, the highly prescriptive set of principles governing many elements of home placement and positioning. At the same time, she says: “I do believe that certain years will be better for certain people under certain animal signs.”
And Kwok doesn’t see the current relative slowdown after a hectic five years as a bad thing.
“People are a little bit more cautious, and they want to make sure things are a little bit more certain. The (15 per cent foreign buyers) tax brings some uncertainty in people’s minds. People have to be confident, and I think this tax is going to wear off eventually like the HST-GST thing, as soon as you accept it as part of life. It’s a good thing people take care.”
George Wong of Magnum Projects takes a broader view of Lunar New Year. “All of the animals have a prosperity side to them. I can’t say that I am an expert on zodiac signs, but I’ve been through two full cycles of real estate in preconstruction sales. I’ve been doing real estate exactly 24 years in Vancouver and with the exception of a couple of years, every year has been strong and robust through all the zodiac signs.”
Looking at 2017, Wong is optimistic. “I see a continuation of a very strong pre-sales market. Everybody was watchful of the market after the announcement of the 15 per cent (foreign buyers) property tax. Seemingly, it has not hit the pre-sales market. It has hit most deeply in the high-end single-family homes market, but it is a split market in that a pre-sales market has been strong and continues to be strong even after the (tax) announcement in July.”
In the Year of the Rooster ... millennial buyers might want to be alert ... and persevering in their real estate aspirations.