Sales & Prices Fall But By How Much

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported sales activity for October, 2008. As is consistent with the Board, disclosure is clouded by the use of multiple metrics, not standard, and not easy to compare from one reporting period to the next. Below, the black text represents the Board's most recent press release, the red text represents previously released Board information, and the blue text represents our analysis.

Sales Volume

Residential property sales in Greater Vancouver declined 55 per cent in October 2008 to 1,364 from the 3,028 sales recorded in October 2007.



Benchmark Prices for Detached Properties

The benchmark price for detached properties declined 4.7 per cent from October 2007 to $695,962. Since May 2008, the benchmark price for a detached property in Greater Vancouver has declined 9.8 per cent.

The last three immediately available benchmark prices provided by REBGV are $920M in spring 2008, $808M in early summer 2008 and $726M in September, 2008.

We calculate that the price decline from the peak in spring 2008 ($920M) to October 2008 ($695M) to be almost 25%.


All Market Price Changes

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that residential benchmark prices, as calculated by the MLSLink Housing Price Index®, declined 8.8 per cent between May and October 2008, resulting in a 3.9 per cent year-to-date price reduction for detached, attached and apartment properties in Greater Vancouver between Octobers 2007 and 2008. In May 2008, the overall residential benchmark price was $568,411, compared to $518,668 in October 2008.

In September, 2008, the REBGV reported that the price was $557,114, down from about $580M in September, 2007.

We calculate the price decline from September 2007 to October 2008 to be about 11%.