House prices hit record high
Posted: Sep 06 2011 Topic:
Excerpt:
Vancouver, widely considered to be the hottest real estate market in the country, saw a 16% increase from July 2010 to July 2011.
And this area’s hot real estate market is bit of a national anomaly. The average year-over-year selling price increase in Canada was 9.3%, and that was pushed up by sales in the two major markets — Vancouver and Toronto.
When those two cities are removed, the average increase was closer to 6%, and some places, like Calgary and Regina, have seen prices decline year-over-year.
Part of the reason for the price increases locally is there are just more homebuyers than there are homes.
“The supply side of the market wasn’t quite able to keep pace with demand in July, and that put some additional upward pressure on prices,” said Chris Evans, association president.
That can be evidenced by the inventory of houses. Even though sales were strong, there was a lower number of new residential listings in the district, 227 in July — down 7% from July 2010.
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