Are We There Yet? The Long Road to Recovery
Unfortunately, no, we aren’t even close.
BC, and quite possibly the rest of Canada, are presumably about to experience what economists are calling a double-dip recession, meaning that housing prices are going to drop once again, and this time in a very aggressive way. Despite being thought to have stabilized, the Canadian housing market is in fact quite vulnerable at the moment, and though prices have been “bottoming out” it appears the barrel goes even deeper than most expected. How much could values potentially drop? Vancouver Sun reports that they could drop as much as another 7.8% lower than the already frighteningly low prices we see today.
Now, this isn’t to say that every house in BC will depreciate this much, however we can already see the market slowing down quite a bit, which is a pretty good indicator of this theory coming true. For example, home sales in Vancouver are a whopping 30% down from this time last year, and August’s sales were 21.4% down from July…unsettling would be an understatement at this point.
Experts are divided on whether or not the housing market will actually take the 7.8% dive, but one thing is for certain – the seller’s market isn’t looking hot. If you were thinking about listing in the near future, it might not be a bad idea to sit on your property for a little longer and try to do some value-added home improvement projects to pass the time. We aren’t there yet…but hopefully we will be soon.
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image courtesy of breahn
