More of the same is the story of October 2022, as stats remained nearly unchanged from just a month ago. Prices have dropped across the board, which is really not a surprise as we recently had another interest rate hike.

With 860 Sales processed in the Fraser Valley for the month of October 2022, we saw a month to month increase of 2% compared to September 2022, and a decrease of 54% compared to October 2021. This is 42% fewer sales than the 10 year average for the month of October.

New listing numbers were comparatively higher in comparison to sale numbers with 1,977 new listings in October 2022. This is just 10% below the 10 year average for the month. This is just 6% fewer than September 2022, and 0.6% fewer than October 2021.

Altogether the market is in a fairly balanced state meaning that it is neither a buyer’s market nor a seller’s market with approximately 16/100 homes listed selling in the month of October 2022.  Anything between 12-20% is considered a balanced market, below 12% is a buyer’s market, and above 20% is a seller’s market. If we break things down to property types we will actually see that detached homes are hovering at 13% mark indicating a balanced market, however townhomes and condos are selling at a rate of 25/100 and 22/100 respectively. As those number are quite close to the 20% balanced market, we are technically in a seller’s market, however, the feel of the market in those sectors is much more balanced than leaning toward the favour of sellers.

As I’m sure many of you are aware, we did see another rate hike on interest rates at the end of October.  As I have touched on many times over the past several months, prices are tied quite closely to the interest rates, as monthly payment are staying relatively similar for the same property type now compared to the peak of the market in March 2022. Prices coming down and interest rates going up have been having an almost canceling effect on monthly payments assuming that we are talking about a 20% downpayment.

If you are considering making a real estate transaction sometime soon, it is probably a decent time to do so depending on your situation.

If you are just buying into the market, time is on your side, so there is certainly no rush to make a purchase happen. We do have to be aware that rising interest rates will have an effect on your pre-approval amount though, so be sure to keep an eye on your borrowing power vs home prices to make sure you don’t get priced out in a decreasing market!

If you are planning to sell and upgrade, sooner could be better for you if you are planning on using the equity in your current home as a downpayment on the next home. As prices go down, you are losing down payment money, which if all your downpayment is coming from the sale you are losing 100% of the money, whereas the prices coming down on the purchasing side, are not canceled out by this as your downpayment will only be a percentage of the purchase price.  For example, if someone was planning on selling for $500,000 and they had $300,000 left owing on their mortgage (we are going to ignore any other fees for this example) they would be walking out of the transaction with $200,000. Now lets say that they would like to buy as much home as they can with a 20% downpayment. This would get them a purchase price of $1,000,000. Now, if the same seller waits and only gets $450,000 for their home, they now only have $150,000 for a downpayment. If they are still wanting to do a minimum of 20% down they will only have a maximum buying power of $750,000.

If you are planning on selling without purchasing anything else, now is likely going to net you more money than the next few months will as prices are trending down. If you are planning on selling and buying back in at a lower price, sooner is also likely better for you as you will likely be losing more cash value on a higher valued home.

Altogether, now is actually a decent time to make a move happen as we have more time than we recently have had to purchase, and homes that are priced right are still selling.