Re: 鈥淕reater Victoria real estate market closed out the year with double-digit increases,鈥� Jan. 12.
I believe the story does readers a great disservice.
Prices for some types of homes might be up year over year. But the story ignores some important facts 鈥� namely that, since May of 2018, sales volume and prices have slumped, suggesting our market is following Vancouver鈥檚 lead into a correction.
The Greater Victoria Real Estate Board recently reported that 325聽homes sold in the region this December, a 24 per cent decrease from the 426 homes that sold in December 2017. More importantly, actual median prices (and not the HPI Benchmark, which some critics say uses data that can be up to six months old) have dropped significantly from May 2018, which appears to have been the market peak. Across Greater Victoria, the median price for a single-family home dropped from $806,500 in May to $760,000 in December, while condos dropped from $422,500 to $407,000. Only townhomes held steady at $550,000.
Meanwhile, inventory is rapidly rising. There were 1,988 active listings at the end of December, a 43.6聽per cent increase from the 1,384聽active listings one year ago.
The trend from May 2018 onward seems clear: Both sales volumes and prices are slumping, while inventory is rising sharply. I believe readers should be made aware of this.
I鈥檓 hoping that, in the future, journalism will prevail and the sa国际传媒 will dig deeper to unearth a more realistic picture of our real estate market.
Cliff Bridges
Comox
