REBGV October 2009 Charts

Here are the updated charts for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver area.

REBGV: High sales levels spur rise in home values

Strong demand has led to a steady rise in Greater Vancouver home prices compared to last year.

Over the last 12 months, the MLSLink® Housing Price Index (HPI) benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver increased 6.8 per cent to $553,702 from $518,668 in October 2008.

"While home prices have been rising in 2009, they have not eclipsed the peaks reached in early 2008," Scott Russell, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) president said. "We're coming off several months of unseasonably high sales levels, which has allowed for a gradual increase in home values this year,"

The REBGV reports that residential property sales in Greater Vancouver totalled 3,704 in October 2009, an increase of 4.1 per cent from the 3,559 sales recorded in September 2009, and an increase of 171.6 per cent compared to October 2008 when 1,364 sales were recorded. Looking back two years, last month's sales increased 22.3 per cent compared to October 2007 when 3,028 sales were recorded.

"High confidence and low mortgage rates are continuing to drive the activity we're seeing in the housing market today," Russell said.

New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties in Greater Vancouver totalled 4,977 in October 2009. This represents a 2.3 per cent increase compared to October 2008 when 4,867 new units were listed, and a 13.4 per cent decline compared to September 2009 when 5,764 properties were listed on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Greater Vancouver.

At 12,084, the total number of property listings on the MLS® decreased 4.1 per cent in October compared to last month and declined 37 per cent from this time last year.

Sales of detached properties increased 201.6 per cent to 1,487 from the 493 detached sales recorded during the same period in 2008. The benchmark price, as calculated by the MLSLink Housing Price Index®, for detached properties increased 7.7 per cent from October 2008 to $749,808.

Sales of apartment properties in October 2009 increased 148.4 per cent to 1,607, compared to 647sales in October 2008. The benchmark price of an apartment property increased 6.3 per cent from October 2008 to $380,975.

Attached property sales in October 2009 are up 172.3 per cent to 610, compared with the 224 sales in October 2008. The benchmark price of an attached unit increased 4.6 per cent between Octobers 2008 and 2009 to $468,798.

Teranet House Price Index for August 2009

OCTOBER 2009

A second consecutive month of price rises in all survey markets Canadian home prices in August were down 3.4% from their pre-correction peak of August 2008, 12 months earlier, according to the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index™. It was the eighth consecutive 12-month decline, but the 12-month decline has been diminishing steadily since it peaked at 6.9% in May. The reason is that August is the fourth straight month in which the index reading for Canada as a whole has been up from the month before. The August rise of 2.0% was particularly vigorous. It was the second month in a row in which prices were up from the month before in all six of the metropolitan markets represented in the index. This turnaround is consistent with an improvement in market conditions in the first half of 2009 - more homes have been selling and fewer have been coming on the market. Teranet – National Bank National Composite House Price Index™ Contact Us For general enquiries: simon.cote@tres.bnc.ca For licenses covering all index-linked products, please contact: Simon Côté simon.cote@tres.bnc.ca 514 879-5379 Website www.housepriceindex.ca

The monthly rises in August were 2.7% in Toronto, 2.0% in Calgary, 1.7% in Vancouver, 1.5% in Ottawa, 1.2% in Montreal and 0.6% in Halifax. For Toronto it was the fourth consecutive rise of 2% or more, taking the cumulative gain to 9.4% in just four months. By way of comparison, Montreal showed a sixth consecutive rise but the cumulative six-month gain was only 4.8%. In the three easternmost markets, Montreal, Halifax and Ottawa, August prices were above the pre-recession peak. Toronto prices are now down only 3.0% from their August 2008 peak. Vancouver prices are still down 7.7% from their June 2008 peak and Calgary's are down 12.9% from their peak of August 2007, two years earlier. Teranet – National Bank House Price Index™ The historical data of the Teranet – National Bank House Price Index™ is available at www.housepriceindex.ca. Metropolitan area Index level August 2009 % change m/m % change y/y Calgary 152.69 2.0 % -8.3 % Halifax 122.84 0.6 % 0.9 % Montreal 126.35 1.2 % 3.6 % Ottawa 120.44 1.5 % 2.8 % Toronto 113.82 2.7 % -3.0 % Vancouver 139.00 1.7 % -7.7 % National Composite 126.31 2.0 % -3.4 % The Teranet–National Bank House Price Index™ is estimated by tracking observed or registered home prices over time using data collected from public land registries. All dwellings that have been sold at least twice are considered in the calculation of the index. This is known as the repeat sales method; a complete description of the method is given at www.housepriceindex.ca The Teranet–National Bank House Price Index™ is an independently developed representation of average home price changes in six metropolitan areas: Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax. The national composite index is the weighted average of the six metropolitan areas. The weights are based on aggregate value of dwellings as retrieved from the 2006 Statistics Canada Census. According to that census1, the aggregate value of occupied dwellings in the metropolitan areas covered by the indices was $1.168 trillion, or 53% of the Canadian aggregate value of $2.207 trillion. All indices have a base value of 100 in June 2005. For example, an index value of 130 means that home prices have increased 30% since June 2005. By: Marc Pinsonneault Senior Economist Economy & Strategy team National Bank Financial Group Teranet - National Bank House Price Index™ thanks the author for their special collaboration on this report. 1 Value of Dwelling for the Owner-occupied Non-farm, Non-reserve Private Dwellings of Canada.

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Rental Rates

An article in the local newspaper the Georgia Straight indicates the effects of low interest rates.

The Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation is losing many of its moderate-income tenants to the housing market.

With variable mortgage rates going as low as 2.25 percent, plus incentives being offered by sellers, families are buying homes and moving out of affordable rental properties operated by the public housing body, according to a report by regional housing manager Don Littleford.

Although this may be good news for the real-estate industry, Littleford noted in his report—to be received tomorrow (October 23) by the MVHC board—that this is a matter of “growing concern”.

"Growing concern?" For whom exactly? The public housing that is offered by MVHC is often at a very low vacancy rate. The concern is, apparently, for MVHC's profits, not so much the tenants taking on high amounts of debt, though as a good Samaritan I would be concerned for both MVHC and the tenants. What is interesting, though, is an indication that the affordable rental market is predicting trouble filling its units. To fill the units they need only drop the price by some amount to attract more applicants, which will certainly hurt their profitability to some degree. I have little doubt they are capable of filling their units to near 100% capacity, but the luxury often awarded to these professionally-run outfits is they leeway choosing their tenants at the expense of charging slightly below-market rents. This luxury may be starting to evaporate. That produces a dilemma for the PMs: take a chance and rent to a suspect tenant or leave the unit vacant. If this is the course they take, profitability can drop by more than the implied decrease in profitability due to lower market rents.

We are hearing reports of weakness in the rental market, likely because of the combination of rising unemployment (causing people to use dwellings more efficiently) and continued dwelling completions exceeding the population growth rate. Low interest rates have allowed the choice of owning to be viable for many more compared to last year -- and a great many obviously prefer to own -- but someone choosing to own instead of rent does not change the overall dwelling supply. The weakness we are witnessing in the rental market is an indication of too much supply for what the population is willing to support. That does not bode well for residential construction starts in the next while, nor are sizable rent increases likely to stick en masse. That sounds awfully deflationary to me.

Hat tip to German Guy.

Behavioural Finance - Effects on Housing

This is a decent background read on the implications of various studies on the housing market.

http://www.prres.net/papers/Kishore_Behavioural_Finance_Application_Property_Market.pdf

TD Economics - Real Estate Trends Could Impact Future Path Of Canadian Monetary Policy

I suggest you read this TD Economics report released today. It contains some interesting thoughts about monetary policy and the real estate market across Canada.

A Meaty Read

The Bank of Canada produces some great analysis that I read from time to time. This paper was quite interesting.

A quote:

From an aggregate perspective there are a number of reasons to think that house prices

could ináuence consumption decisions in Canada. First, residential structures and land

account for a large share of Canadian household sector wealth. Sixty eight per cent of

Canadian households own a home and for many it represents their largest asset. Second,

house price growth is associated with higher household borrowing. The positive correlation

between consumption and house prices may be related to housingís role as collateral. Between

2000 and 2007 the real price of existing homes increased by 52 per cent. At the same time,

the ratio of household debt to GDP rose dramatically from 58 per cent in 2000 to 76 percent

in 2007. By 2007 roughly 80 per cent of Canadian household debt was secured by real estate.