Fraser Valley residential real estate

Key Take-Aways from the February Statistics

The February data is out on the Fraser Valley residential market, and while many of the key metrics are moving in the right direction, showing improvement as we near the Spring market, the growth is softer than one would hope to see. There are, however, some bright spots in the data, particularly in the detached home segment.

Highlights from the February statistics include:

• Detached homes saw another increase in Benchmark Prices when townhouse and condo both decreased again. Check out the pricing chart below that’s clearly showing a turnaround.
• Average days on market dropped significantly for all home types. Detached homes went from 56 days down to 43, townhouse decreased from 38 to 31 days, and condo from 42 to 36.
• Average days-on-market increased for all home types, which is typical in January as listings carry over from an always-slow December.
• An unusual reduction in new listings compared to last month, which February has only seen two other times in the last decade.
• Sales increased 7-12%, depending on home type, which is approximately half the growth rate we would expect in February.
• Active listings ended the month 48% above the 10-year average for the month of February.

How the Fraser Valley land market is reacting

Over the past month, the most notable theme in the residential development land market in the Fraser Valley is just how wide the sentiment gap has grown between the condo land market and everything else. The contrast has also highlighted how much louder negativity is than positivity. I’ll explain. The typical conversation with developers and builders these days starts with their commentary about how terrible the entire housing market is, how it’s all going to crap, and how they’re apprehensive about acquisitions. Then, it finishes with an upbeat, “Oh, but if you have a good townhouse site, I would be all over that.” The noise in the condo market is drowning out the rest of the market.

Focusing on townhouse land, single family, and even longer-term development land made for an incredibly busy February for us, with buyers in those segments far more optimistic and actually pulling the trigger on deals. There is activity in the condo land space, but the price gap between vendors’ expectations and purchasers’ appetite has grown again, making it difficult to get deals to come together.

The residential development land market is a spotty, mixed bag of sentiment and activity. While this makes it difficult to navigate, it has also resulted in more real acquisition opportunities than we’ve seen in a while.