Home sales in the Greater Vancouver Area fell 31.4% in March from a year earlier, hitting the lowest level for that month in more than three decades.
According the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, there were 1,727 homes sold across the region in March, which was down 31.4% from March 2018. However, last month’s sales were slightly higher than the 1,484 homes sold in February.
The year-over-year decline is being blamed on government policy measures such as the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions mortgage stress test rules that came into effect in January 2018, as well as a foreign home buyers’ tax that is cooling the once-hot west coast housing market.
The amount of housing inventory increased year-over-year, with listings in Vancouver sitting at 12,774 in March, a 52.4% increase from the same month last year. In terms of prices, homes in Vancouver are still among the priciest in the country but have decreased since 2018. Metro
Vancouver’s composite benchmark price fell 7.7% year-over-year last month to $1.1 million.
Meanwhile, Canada’s largest housing market remained stable in March. The Toronto Real Estate Board reported that 7,187 homes were sold across the Greater Toronto Area in March, virtually unchanged from a year earlier when 7,188 sales were made. The average price for a
house in Greater Toronto inched up half a percentage point during March to $788,335.
Despite Toronto's stable March sales, the local real estate board is still urging government policy makers to take another look at the regulatory intervention that has cooled the housing market.
"The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions stress test continues to impact home buyers’ ability to qualify for a mortgage," the Toronto Real Estate Board said in a news release.
"TREB is still arguing that the stress test provisions and mortgage lending guidelines generally, including allowable amortization periods for insured mortgages, should be reviewed."
