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'Top-tier' of Vancouver real estate sees great divide in 2017

Despite the federal and provincial government’s best efforts to cool the Vancouver housing market and make homes more affordable, sales of “top-tier” condos in Vancouver continued to escalate in 2017, according to a report issued this week by Sotheby
Vancouver luxury home

Despite the federal and provincial government’s best efforts to cool the Vancouver housing market and make homes more affordable, sales of “top-tier” condos in Vancouver continued to escalate in 2017, according to a report issued this week by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada.

The luxury real estate brokerage’s annual Top-Tier Real Estate Year-End Report said that sales of $1 million-plus condos leaped by 27 per cent last year, compared with the year before. This is likely due to both increased demand and rising prices pushing more sales into the $1 million-plus category, which Sotheby’s defines as the “top tier”.

This is a huge difference from sales of “top-tier” single-family homes, which fell 20 per cent year over year to 2,307 sales in 2017. With virtually no detached houses falling below the $1 million bracket, this drop is purely attributable to slower sales activity.

However, despite the slower market activity, single-family home prices did not decline correspondingly, the Sotheby’s report observed. It cited Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver figures that the average price of a single-family home was $3,573,700 in Vancouver West and $1,573,500 in Vancouver East in November 2017, up 1.5 per cent and 6.7 per cent year-over-year.

With almost all Vancouver’s detached houses valued at over $1 million, this price bracket is no longer considered “luxury” – so Sotheby’s also examined the $4 million-plus market to see how luxury homes fared in 2017.

This price bracket saw a much greater sales decline, falling 33 per cent year over year, to 382 home sales in 2017, down from 573 in 2016.

However, 2017 was also a year of two halves, with the first six months seeing muted activity in the $1 million-plus market following the August 2016 introduction of the foreign buyer tax, followed by a dramatic recovery in the second half of the year.

Vancouver real estate sales over $1 million between July and December 2017 increased 35 per cent compared with the same period in 2016 – recovering from the 23 per cent year-over-year decline in the first half of 2017.