The pace of Metro Vancouver home sales slowed significantly last month amid the announcement of B.C.’s new foreign buyer tax, according to newly released statistics.
The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said residential property sales totaled 3,226 in July, a drop of 26.7 per cent from June and 18.9 per cent from the previous July.
It was also the first time since January that home sales fell below 4,000 a month.
Realtors told CTV News the sudden implementation of the property transfer tax on foreign nationals, which was announced July 25 and took effect Aug. 2, left many clients feeling uncertain about the market.
“Everyone was caught off guard and so I think it’s really stunned the market, at least temporarily,” Steve Saretsky said.
Single-family home sales in Richmond, Burnaby and Vancouver fell from 106 three weeks ago to just 12 in the week after the tax was announced, a drop of 89 per cent.
But despite the decline, last month’s overall sales were still 6.5 per cent higher than the 10-year sales average for July, according to the REBGV. Board president Dan Morrison painted the change as a return to “historically normal levels” following a period of several months of record-breaking sales activity.
“We’ll wait and watch over the next few months to see if this marks the return of more normal market trends,” Morrison said in a release.
Listings were still up slightly from June, as were prices. The benchmark price for residential properties across Metro Vancouver was $930,400 in July, up from $917,800 the previous month. That figure also represents a 32.6 per cent increase over July 2015.
The REBGV said the sales-to-active listings ratio was 38.6 per cent, noting that downward pressure on prices is usually expected when the ratio drops below 12 per cent.
