VANCOUVER – According to new housing data, the listing prices for detached homes appear to be falling as Vancouver’s real estate market faces what an expert calls “significant headwinds.”
It’s also making suckers of those who bought too high in the summer when prices were at their peak.
Data released Friday showed that those looking to buy a single family detached home in the city last month forked over about $1.5 million in Metro Vancouver, but recent listings suggest that the benchmark is falling, reported CTV News.
They also found a number of East Vancouver homes priced under then $1 million mark during a search of MLS listings on Monday, including one that sold for $560,000 below the initial asking price.
Detached houses are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than owners are asking.
That home, located in Renfrew Heights, was initially listed at $1.36 million in August, but sold for $800,000 in mid-November.
Sutton West Coast realtor David Hutchinson has been tracking plunging prices and found several detached homes listed below $1 million, some of which had been recently renovated.
“If you want to sell, you have to be priced sharply, and you see a lot of price drops,” Hutchinson told CTV.
And even with price drops, he added, he’s seen many sale prices lower than what sellers are asking for. He said he knew of one home in the west side of the city that was initially priced at $3.9 million, but when it didn’t sell, the owners reduced the price. They kept reducing it in small increments, but eventually they couldn’t wait any longer, and had to drop the price by nearly $1 million.
Another home on West 8th in Kitsilano was listed for $2.5 million, but could only fetch $1.6 million.
“There’s not this crazy deluge of offers coming in like before, when you could price it below the market value and wait for all the offers to come in. That’s not happening anymore,” Hutchinson said.
“Buyers are being a little more picky now and you didn’t see that before.”
