How's the Real Estate Market?
“How’s the Market doing?” - I get this question a lot and in order to give the answer, the right direction, we need to go back to last Spring. The Spring of 2011 was very robust, coming out of the 2010 upgrade in our status in China, as a Friendly Nation. The Spring of 2011 was very energetic right through June. Then July and August were as if someone went into the Real Estate closet and flipped the lights out.
It was "The Dog Days of Summer", that traditional summer period that was upon us. Now we have had some very a-typical summers in the last decade that challenges us to continue to use term Traditional Summer, but it was just that. Sales slowed and inventories that had been healthy in the late spring began to look too high. Then Labour Day came and went and we began to see a very Traditional Fall, with September sales being better than August and October better than September and November being better than October and a fairly (somewhat) active December.
Statistically speaking, it was the 3rd worst Fall in the last 10 years (and we have had a couple of doozies - remembering the Global Financial Crisis). The intensity increased slightly each month but without enough energy to push up prices. Vancouver showed a 17% price increase in 2011 and we had the best year that we ever have had, but the market does not increase in a lineal fashion, where we probably experienced a low 20's% growth in prices in the first half of the year, and prices took a bit of a dive through the Summer (5%) and the Fall just wasn't robust enough to correct that drop.
Now December, and Christmas time, if we follow the Traditional model would be slow and this slowness typically remains through January and into the middle of February, however December as I said was "fairly somewhat" active, and January has been quite active, feeling a lot like someone went into the Real Estate closet and flipped the switch on a month (on more) early.
I am looking forward to an above average Spring similar to last year. This is a more bullish estimate than is being touted by the "pundits", but that's my feeling.
