Sales of Greater Victoria homes were “brisk” in July, the president of the Victoria Real Estate Board said Thursday.
Monthly sales rose compared with July 2012, Shelley Mann said.
In some cases, multiple offers are coming in for properties — although they are not always over the asking price, she said.
Back in 2007, when Greater Victoria’s real-estate market was red-hot, bidding wars would take place and it was not uncommon to see sales higher than the intial asking price.
The capital region is experiencing a balance between supply and demand with a sales-to-active-listings ratio of 15 per cent, Mann said.
The ratio is calculated as the number of unit sales divided by the number of active listings.
A balanced market is generally seen as having a ratio between 15 and 20 per cent.
A total of 583 properites listed with the board’s multiple listing service sold in July, down from 664 in June.
That decrease is “part of our normal summer marketplace cycle,” said Mann.
Despite the month-over-month decline, last month’s figures were up 11.5 per cent from one year ago, when 523 properties changed hands.
July saw 19 sales of more than $1 million, with two topping $2 million.
• July 2013: the average price of a single-family house in Greater Victoria was $596,445, and the median was $529,500.
• July 2012: the average was $581,117 and the median was $535,000.
• Total properties on the market: 4,772 in July, down from 5,094 a year ago.
• The strongest sales of single-family homes took place in Saanich East, Saanich West and Langford.
Victoria and Saanich East led in condominium and townhouse sales.
• Total value of all properties sold in July: $280.4 million.
• For the area of Vancouver Island north of the Malahat, total July sales of single-family homes climbed to 433 from 383 in June. The average price for those homes was $333,056 in July, down from $341,634 in June, the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board said.
• At the end of July, there were 2,945 single-family homes listed through that board, down from 3,317 a year ago.
— Times Colonist
