| HEY Everyone !
Hope everyone had a great November! We spent the first half of the month eating Halloween candy and now we’re already on to Christmas shopping LOL! Where does the time go?!
Anyway, I wanted to get this market update out early on this month before the Holiday Season! |
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| So for those of you that have been following my updates you know that this upcoming month (December 7th) we’ll have the Bank of Canada’s latest announcement on interest rates hikes (If they are going to continue to increase them or pause). My prediction here is they will very likely increase rates again and if they pause here they will almost certainly increase them in March. With inflation hovering at 7% and a clear mandate to reduce it back down to 2% there is a much higher chance they will increase rates once again (Increase number SEVEN for those counting). This would follow suit with what is likely to happen on December 14th in the US with their own announcement on interest as well as the general trend of many other European countries experiencing the same inflation etc. Higher interest rates alone in isolation always reduce home prices. We all know this unfortunate fact but the question is when will inflation be under control enough that world banks see fit to ease off their interest rate hikes? That’s the bajillion dollar question LOL! |
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SALES VOLUME
Overall in the Fraser Valley, we had another one of the lowest volume sales months in our recent history with 783 sales (down from 860 in October 2022). This is the second-lowest sales volume for any November since 2008 when there were 477 sales). My hope is that many of the buyers who have been watching and “waiting” for this market to go down will now in January finally need to transact and we’ll see the volume start to increase again. |
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ACTIVE LISTINGS
Listings are down in most areas between 5% – 10% with a few areas remaining unchanged. We’ve seen many sellers delist their homes after not selling this month as well as far fewer new listings hit the market. We expect this number to change substantially in January as many new sellers and buyers come to market. It’s common to see January pick up in the volume of listings with more transactions to follow. |
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PRICES
Prices fell in the majority of areas between 2%-5% last month with Misson Detached Homes falling 12%. (There was one outlier in Delta with Condos seeing a 20% increase but this can be explained by the sales volume dropping from 17 to 8 month over month and the new ones all being newer and nicer on average vs the month prior.) I wouldn’t expect prices to maintain with interest rates set to increase at least another couple of times – we’ll likely see a continuation of steady slow depreciation as we come into the first half of 2023. My hope is this will level off by summer to fall 2023 and we’ll see rates start to come down again which will in turn see home values move up again! It doesn’t look like it will happen sooner than that in my current estimation. |
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WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
This question gets more complicated every month  !
Essentially if you are a first-time home buyer, I would make sure you are fully pre-approved and working with your realtor now to get sent listings. Regardless if you aren’t going to buy right away. You’ll want to get your financing in order and explore that fully with your broker/banker/realtor to see what’s possible and then from there, you can have a much better idea of what to expect. Then you can see if it makes sense to purchase something now or whether you want to possibly wait. There are trade-offs when it comes to interest rates and speculating the market – always best to have more information than less 🙂 |
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If you are upsizing then now may be one of the best times to consider making the move as you’ll “save” far more than you’ll “lose” peak to trough of the current market. The higher priced homes have come down farther than your lower priced home and the delta between those numbers has decreased for many making a move that was impossible before in the rising market, possible now.
If you are downsizing then I would be exploring options with your broker and realtor to see if there’s a way to accomplish your goals sooner rather than later or possibly even consider other options. Much of all of this would depend on the stage of life you’re in and if you’re retired and/or have a working income etc.
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| As always, I hope you found this helpful and please reach out any time with any questions or feedback!
Cheers! |
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