*|FNAME|*,

With a 56% increase in new listings for May 2020 compared to April 2020 it looks as if things are looking a little bit more normal as lockdown protocols have been lifted somewhat thanks to our collective cooperation and everyone doing their part to keep COVID-19 at bay.

More listings mean more homes for buyers to choose from, and as I mentioned last month, we have not appeared to have a shortage of buyers even through the lockdown. With more homes coming on the market in the end of May, this will likely mean that we will see this summer look more like what we had expected the spring to look like; A fairly normal and active market, with very little change in average price.

I have seen a lot of news reports floating around lately about Canada house prices speculated to fall by 9-18% but Canada is far too big to forecast what will happen in the whole country. When you wake up in the morning and try and figure out the weather to see what clothes you will put on, do you check the Canadian weather forecast? Does it matter what the weather is doing in Regina, Winnipeg or Toronto, when you are just going to be staying in the lower mainland all day? Not at all!

In order for house prices to decrease, there needs to be more people that want to sell than buyers and that simply has not been the case recently, and in my business it is certainly not looking that we are going to get to a market that will cause prices to decrease by any substantial amount. I do recognize that prices did decrease month to month from April 2020 to May 2020, however its was very minimal amount at 0.29%. If the lockdowns had lasted longer, I would have expected a similar drop in a month to month scenario, but now that the restrictions have been lifted, it seems that we will see stability.

Stable prices means that there is balance in the market, and we can really see how the balance works by looking at the sales to active listing ratio. In the month of May 2020, the ratio was 14% meaning that for every 100 homes listed for sale, 14 homes sell. Anything in between 12-20% is considered a balanced market. Higher than 20% is a seller’s market (prices likely to increase) and lower than 12% is a buyer’s market (Prices likely to decrease).

If you read this newsletter monthly or you like to stay on top of what is happening in the market you may recognize the fact that we did see prices drop in 2018 and 2019 but we never actually went into a buyer’s market; So why is that the case? Well, there is always a normal amount of fluctuation both up and down in any market over time and these small fluctuations are truly reflective of large-scale price changes as they often flatten out over time. In the case of 2018 and 2019, we still showed that we were in a balanced market, but we also were coming off of two years of the most one sided seller’s market in our recorded history of the Fraser Valley. The conclusion that I have come to is that we simply saw momentum take prices up above where they really should have been and 2018 and 2019s decreases were simply correcting the market back to where it should have been.

If you are thinking of making a move sometime in the next year or so, be sure to get in touch so that we can start making your plan to make the move as stress free, and as financially positive for you as possible! I look forward to hearing from you soon!