October housing sales across Northern BC are up over 31% in the past 12 months according to the BC Real Estate Association.
Last month, our region saw 434 units sold, a spike of over 100 sales when compared to October 2023 (330).
Chief Economist, Brendon Ogmundson told Vista Radio buyers and sellers pretty much had the same idea once the fall season kicked into gear.
“The narrative was that once the Bank of Canada started cutting rates we would see activity start to pick up. That wasn’t the case in most markets until October for whatever reason – consumer behaviour can be hard to predict sometimes and everyone seemed to get into the market at once.”
“We saw this in a lot of markets in Canada,” added Ogmundson.
“Month-over-month, home sales in northern BC were up over 20% so we are seeing a really strong recovery and the incoming data shows that it is holding up in November so we could bet at a turning point for home sales.”
He added with rate cuts having the desired effect for both buyers and sellers with one more cut still to be decided.
“Maybe we will see something closer to a 25 basis point cut but either way the Bank of Canada is cutting. Five-year fixed mortgage rates are probably not going to fall much further than they already have and in fact, might start to increase a little.”
Province-wide, home sales are up 33.5% over the past 12 months with the biggest increases taking place in the Okanagan, Fraser Valley and Greater Vancouver regions.
The average price of a home in Northern BC stayed relatively flat at $427,537. In BC, the average residential price is $970,845.
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