BC Real Estate Association numbers point to market 'uptrend' at beginning of 2024
The BC Real Estate Association says there was a nearly 30 per cent increase in home sales last month compared with January 2023, while prices were also up.
The association says 3,979 sales were completed last month, for an average price of $957,909, a more than 10-per-cent jump from the year before.
Association chief economist Brendon Ogmundson says the sales numbers show a “clear uptrend” to kick off 2024 with a dollar value of $3.8 billion in sales for the month.
Ogmundson says declining mortgage rates and further interest rate cuts expected to be made by the Bank of Canada this year are both “driving sentiment in the market and bring pent-up demand off the sidelines.”
The Fraser Valley and Greater Vancouver saw the greatest year-over-year jumps in unit sales and dollar volumes.
Sales in Chilliwack last month topped $144.6 million, a more than 73-per-cent jump from last year, while in Greater Vancouver sales reached $1.78 billion, a 48.4-per-cent increase.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2024.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Auston Matthews to miss second straight playoff game with Toronto Maple Leafs facing elimination
Auston Matthews will miss the Maple Leafs' must-win Game 6 against the Boston Bruins.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.