After three years of falling prices and sluggish home sales, Squamish realtors are forecasting a period of relatively stable prices and a slow but steady return of consumer confidence, especially among buyers, over the next 18 months or so.
Recent statistics released by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) showed the Squamish market as having seen an 8.6 decline (to $447,000) in the average single-family home sale price from April 2010 to April 2011, and a 24.5 per cent drop over the past three years. Both of those figures represented the largest percentage decreases of any market in the Greater Vancouver area.
Lisa Bjornson of Royal LePage Black Tusk Realty on Friday (May 6), however, pointed out that if you compare prices from five years ago with today's figures, the average Squamish home sale price is actually up 8.4 per cent. A spike in Squamish home prices between the Olympic announcement in 2003 and 2007 was followed by the 2008 economic downturn, leading to a period of limited interest on the part of buyers and a drastic downturn in the number of sales, she said.
Jill Carter of Re/Max Sea to Sky Realty on Friday said only 167 single-detached homes were sold in Squamish from May 1, 2010 to April 30, 2011 a far cry from 2005-'06, when annual sales were topping 1,000.
However, Bjornson pointed out that 41 of those 167 sales occurred in the past month alone, with six sales in the first six days of May. That leads her to believe that the number of people looking to buy homes in Squamish is likely on the increase.
"The feeling from the realtors right now is that there is definitely an increase in activity," Bjornson said. "There's more inquiries and there are more buyers out looking.
"The other observation from the realtors in the last few months is that buyers are getting a bit easier to bring to a contract," she said. "For a couple years they were more standoffish at that stage, but now there seems to be a little less tension between buyers and sellers and the feeling at the moment seems to be really upbeat."
In the most recent REBGV survey, Richmond saw the highest single-year price increase, 18.5 per cent. Carter, though, said it's believed that markets such as Richmond, Delta and West Vancouver are being significantly affected by buyers from overseas, especially Asia, who see the relatively stable Canadian economy as an attractive one in which to invest and are looking for properties close to Vancouver.
Carter said she thinks there's still a perception both regionally and internationally that Squamish is part of the hinterlands when in fact it's only 45 minutes from the North Shore.
"It's not just Squamish. It's Delta and the Fraser Valley, the outlying areas, but there are a lot of places closer in to the city that are getting pushed by Asian buyers. We think that with some good advertising and marketing, people will realize how close in we are," Carter said.
"I don't think people realize how close we really are, especially with the highway upgrades," she added. "It would be great to do some more [marketing of Squamish], because the majority of folks think it's really far away."
Bjornson said the fact that there's little in the way of new construction happening in Squamish at the moment will likely contribute to a period of relatively stable prices for single-detached homes.
Carter said that back in 2007, a lot of newer single-detached homes in Squamish were selling in the $600,000 to $750,000 range.
"That's now a really hard category to catch. The one that's really active now are the ones between $450,000 and $550,000. Anything above that seems to be a really hard sell," she said.
Carter said the large inventory of Squamish townhomes that were built in the mid-2000s and in a couple of cases are just now reaching completion still hasn't been cleared, resulting in a drop in prices in that category. She said the ongoing post-receivership sale of the Aqua Coastal Village has also driven townhome and apartment prices downward.
"I think they thought with the new pricing that they'd be flying off the shelves, but I think it's still going to be a while before we absorb that market," Carter said, "and I do think that's going to affect the [prices of] the attached units over the next little while."
Over the past three years, Bjornson said, "In some pockets of the market some townhomes and some apartments the prices are off around 30 per cent, more than just the [overall] 24.5 that the REBGV is looking at."
There's an upside to that, she said.
"I think we're going to get projects that are in the receivership situations or whatever, to the point where you're getting affordable options," Bjornson said. "I think now that we're at that level where we're adjusted and it's corrected, and I think over the next year we're going to see some more active buyers and more activity in general."
"We seem to probably have weathered the storm, and there's definitely a more positive feeling in the real estate market than we've seen for some time."
