A surge in home sales in April may have brought the Greater Victoria real estate market back into balance, says the Victoria Real Estate Board.
The board’s most recent figures, showing strong sales in April and fewer new listings, suggest the region is tilting back to centre from a buyer’s market.
According to Shelley Mann, president of the board, a surge of consumer confidence seemed to take hold of the market in April.
“I think there’s pent-up buyer’s demand. People have been waiting to see what would happen,” Mann said with a nod to the demise of the harmonized sales tax as of April 1. “There was no fallout from that and sellers haven’t dropped prices and buyers have been realizing that. And with not much in the way of new inventory, all together that made for a good month of sales.”
There were a total of 615 home sales last month, a five per cent improvement over the 586 recorded in the same month last year, and well ahead of the 483 sales in March of this year.
Mann said the next few months tend to follow trends set in April, so the board is expecting a fairly strong second quarter.
However, she was quick to note after such a slow first quarter it will be difficult for the board’s expectation of two per cent growth this year to be realized.
“I don’t know if we will get there or not, but we are at least on the right track to see a reasonable amount of activity — buyers are confident, sellers are selling and [real estate agents] are happy,” said Mann.
Home sale prices stayed relatively flat last month with the median price of a single family home hitting $540,000, up from $510,777 in March. It was still down slightly from the median sale price of $554,000 in April last year.
The median sale price for a condominium last month remained at $265,000, as it had been in March, but was down slightly from the median price of $277,000 in April last year.
Townhomes saw some improvement in April with the median sale price hitting $415,450, up from $384,450 in March, but again it was down slightly from the $416,250 from April last year.
Mann said even though there hasn’t been much in the way of new inventory and sales have picked up she doesn’t expect to see noticeable increases in home prices.
“If that happens, we will price ourselves out of the market again,” she said. “The advice will be to ‘not go there’ because if [a seller] does it will be a standoff. Educated buyers are in the marketplace and they are not going to pay inflated prices. Sellers have to stay within the market range.”
The top of that range did see some serious improvement last month.
The region’s luxury home market, classed as homes priced for more than $1 million, was down 39 per cent this quarter in terms of number of sales. But a report by ReMax Canada this week said it rebounded in April. While there were only 34 sales of $1 million-plus homes through the first three months of the year, in April alone there were 30, and five of those were over the $2 million threshold.
