MLS numbers courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.
March 2012 month to date
Net Unconditional Sales: 281 (152)
New Listings: 760 (465)
Active Listings: 3908 (3832)
Sales to new listings ratio: 37% (33%)
March 2011
Net Unconditional Sales: 622
New Listings: 1501
Active Listings: 4100
Sales to new listings ratio: 41%
Sales to active listings ratio: 15% or 6.6 MOI
Lots of bubble chatter in the media and from the banks these days. Looks like the consensus is that there is more mortgage market tightening on the way possibly this week or next. Let's see if it puts an additional dent in an already relatively weak market.
29 comments:
Lower than last year? Looking like it.
Thanks LeoS for keeping these Monday market updates going, much appreciated!
Indeed, LeoS, that's greatly appreciated by me too!
144 SFH sales so far....
Average 599k
Median 551k
@Mindset wrote (in the previous topic): I am going to go out on a limb here and say that there are three categories of opinion out there based on the position people are in and their associated RE actions
I think that you did a great job summarizing the three categories of opinion and agree that "Group 2" is the rational viewpoint.
House in Oak Bay - small on a small lot, but $479,900.
2413 Mowat.
Only 40' wide too....by the time you pay PTT and tear down the home you are looking at over 500k for a small and narrow lot.
They probably got priced out of Fernwood and had to buy in Oak Bay.
Had dinner with a friend who is a developer here - lots of trades looking for any kind of work right now, he said.
All it is going to take is a major event and the dam with burst.
^Construction has been slow for a few years now....nothing new.
My hope is it's going to be a great time to build because of that!
then all of these contractors must be getting ready to sell and move if there is no or little work for those other than Maximillain Huxley, Citta, and Abstract.
Will this OFSI change hurt you or your bank more or less than your doctor putting on a rubber glove and saying 'let's take a little look-see at this'?
There is a s#!t tonne of camp work up north with excellent pay. So they don't have to sell anything or move anywhere...14 days in 14 days out.
@Animal Spirit
Your link is not working... What's the full URL?
No problem. Only takes a minute to repost the stats and keep the numbers of comments per article manageable.
From The Globe and Mail: Bank regulator proposes heightened scrutiny of mortgage market - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/bank-regulator-proposes-heightened-scrutiny-of-mortgage-market/article2374070/
"by the time you pay PTT and tear down the home"
I hope you mean tear down the house. A home is a place where people live. :-)
Thought I would share some google statistics I came across on where globally the words 'Housing Bubble' are being used the most for city searches (which should indicate consumer sentiment or concern about specific cities).
2009 searches for housing bubbles were exclusively US cities (with only Vancouver making the list historically), and now this list is dominated by Canada and Australia. When you think about our tiny population base and profile in comparison with the USA (I would guess a lot less people searching in the first place), this would seem to be quite a statistically significant shift.
Canada Tops Trend of Global Google Searches for the Words 'Housing Bubble'
Victoria didn't make the list, but then, I would guess we are not on the same radar as world-reknowned Vancouver, Oil-rich Alberta or almighty Toronto.
I do find it interesting with how much work there is in Alberta that the bubble concerns appear to be as big there as Vancouver or Toronto. I guess people can get into big debt anywhere, maybe even more so with job security and continual wage growth?
Interesting stats to read while you drink your coffee this AM.
Seems like the rate of listings is starting its spring spike.
This is the way our lending was and should be. Now. I just did a mortgage with 20% down, 25 year. Bank did it's own appraisal, needed notice of assessments for the last two years. all as it should be.
These articles just don't seem like breaking news...
Does anyone here have a 40 year mortgage with 0% down? Who in their right mind would go for that? What bank is doing that?
I know that predatory lending was rampant down south. I have a friend who lost everything. it was 2007, He was a builder will a 100k line of credit and three houses on the go. He himself had a ARM mortgage on a house way too crazy (that he built). He would have been fine but The banks sent down a mandate to clear their books so his line of credit was pulled, was given no leeway on his house, and was forced into bankruptcy. this rippled over to the other three houses so the bank then had four houses. They dumped them all on the market cheap. The key difference is the banks actions...
dasmo - while you may have never taken out one of these mortgages, many people did and many people have taken on mortgages with effectively -1% to 5% down. HELOCs are running wild.
The borrowing habits of these people will unfortunately have a large impact on the value of the homes where people borrowed responsibly.
If there was not a problem then why is just about every major bank and the govt saying so?
We have a friend who took on a 40 year mortgage when they were available a few years ago.
Note on my above story, it's not just the Banks action, my pal's mistake was the ARM mortgage on the way to crazy house. He shouldn't have counted his chickens quite yet....of course this all timed perfectly to when the timer on the ARM was up and his mortgage payments doubled.
I stand corrected on the 40 year mortgage. I haven't done calculations on such a mortgage but it seems like it would be a big money maker for the bank... Well, perhaps the multi-generational mortgage will become the norm in the future, for now I think it's a good think to put the brakes on.
I don't necessarily have a problem with a low down payment per se - with interest rates this low, there are better places to have your money 'locked in' than in a house. However, when it's combined with high debt to income ratios and low levels of 'other assets' it is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the debt to service ratio should be on a sliding scale where the more 'down' you have the higher the ratio can be, but the less down, the less debt should take a bite out of your income. If the debt to service ratio was only 15-20 percent for those without a down, that might be a better situation than a 35 percent debt to service ratio with a 10-20 percent down payment.
I don't necessarily have a problem with a low down payment per se - with interest rates this low, there are better places to have your money 'locked in' than in a house. However, when it's combined with high debt to income ratios and low levels of 'other assets' it is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the debt to service ratio should be on a sliding scale where the more 'down' you have the higher the ratio can be, but the less down, the less debt should take a bite out of your income. If the debt to service ratio was only 15-20 percent for those without a down, that might be a better situation than a 35 percent debt to service ratio with a 10-20 percent down payment.
looks like lower than last year. Yes,there are better places to have your money 'locked in' than in a house but people feel comfort to invest in a house.sell my house
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