Weekend Open Thread (12/04/08) + 1083 condos for sale today!
Well, here is an open thread for your comments on the real estate scene lately. As of today, a search of the MLS in the VREB area found 1083 condos. The breakdown shows 312 were listed below the March median price of $300,000, while the other 771 were listed higher. Grand total on MLS is now 1083. So this inventory is still growing every day.
A search of Craigslist found 136 condos listed for sale. As usual, by the time you click this link the number could go up or down a bit. But probably up.
Some other interesting stories to consider and maybe comment on:
An Ex-Chancellor from the British tory governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major says that a crash was predictable, as Britons have been living on crazy credit. Why, if a top economic official expected this, didn't the British avoid all this trouble?
Greed? Isn't Victoria more English than the English? Do tell.
Over at the Guardian, a columnist argues that high house prices are a bad thing. To sum up, "high prices are socially divisive and act as a brake on aspiration." Maybe cheaper IS better?
The Victoria Times Colonist, while still positive about the local market in general, is now publishing stories such as this one which describes how posh American neighbourhoods are not immune to foreclosures in this colossal real estate bust.
History of the Housing Market provides a nice overview of US toubles from ABC News, including some comments from Robert Shiller. Hat tip to anonymous at 10:40 at House Hunt Victoria for mentioning the video.
Meanwhile, a fevered frenzy of blog insults, slappy put downs and annoyed retorts has burst out at house hunt victoria and right here.
Ah real estate, doesn't it just give you a warm and fuzzy feeling! 
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Greg,
I know you like stats so you might enjoy reading VREB's detailed March Stats. In particular the condo breakdown on page 16 might be useful data to add to your condo chart in the previous post. You could show sales/active listings by price range in a similar fashion to this chart. What do you think??
Roger
Greg, that pic must be "my hubby says", he has that desperate look to him, maybe SP just threw another tantrum.....poor guy, I feel for him.... sorta. ;)
the problem I see with all these new condos here is they are all being built in undesirable areas for the retiring seniors that all the RE pump machine keeps spewing out will be buying all these places. C'mon, Vic West ? would you want your parents or grandparents living in that scuzzhole area ? how about downtown by the homeless shelter ? I don't see the seniors flocking here like the media wants you to believe is and will be happening. And why not Langford ? not exactly a foot friendly area for seniors either.
VG - a followup to your post. Here is what Trevor from Victoria posted on Garth's site about senior's moving to Victoria - CLICK HERE
VG - I know what you mean. I don't know much about the development, but there is a place in Colwood selling $700,000 condos. The idea that people will move to Victoria and choose an expensive condo in Colwood just sounds like a roll of the dice to me.
I just heard that they are going to be building million dollar condos in Estevan village as well as a massive development in Esquimalt.
Now really who is going to buy this stuff?
After driving around Sunday out toward Happy Valley and Colwood. The SFH market is still very tight in Victoria. Especially in established neighbourhoods, almost nothing available in those particular area's. New developments, built during this boom seem to be where a majority of places forsale are. Even area's still in development have a disporportionate number of resales. I don't think the developments were sold out yet.
I still can't grasp how people are affording current prices. Most SFH seem to calculate out to $2400+/mo mortgage. Yeah I 'could' pay it, but I'd be trapped, unable to handle unexpected expenses, eat no name brand mac & cheese, economic (job loss) would be instant foreclosure and no saving for retirement. The risks seem to outweigh the benefits, especially at this late stage of the housing bubble.
The Single Family Dwelling inventory is increasing an will continue to do so for the next 3 months.
Here is a graph of SFD sales and active listings in Greater Victoria. When you divide the sales by the active listings you get this Sales/Active Chart. You can see that the ratio is still high at 36% but it is much better than last year and much better than the boom year of 2005. Watch for improvements in this ratio and when we get under 20% we will be in a buyers market.
To get a swift decline in single family homes, I think that ratio would have to go under 10%, Roger. Not sure that is going to happen this year (yet). But it's possible.
Greg,
Under 10% sales/active listings in all probability would result in a crash. Under 18% is a buyer's market and this would result in a more gradual reduction in prices. The other ratio sales/new listings is also important and is in the report I linked to above. We are currently at 56% (balanced market) compared to 63% (sellers market) a year ago. The 1st qtr. of 2008 is 53% compared to 62% in 1st qtr. 2007. Once we get under 40% with this ratio we are in a buyers market.
With all the new listings coming on and sales down from last year (see this chart) I suspect we will have a buyers market by July. What do you think??
BTW - Anyone interested in a complete analysis of the GV SFD market can watch my slideshow by clicking here. Use the Pause and single step buttons to step through the slides manually.
I just received the VIREB single family dwelling (SFD) stats today. If Sales/New Listings Ratio (SNR) is under 40% we have a buyers market. Here are the numbers:
Campbell River - SNR 38% (65% last March) - 6.4 months of inventory - BUYERS
Comox Valley - SNR 33% (56% last March) - 8.3 months of inventory - BUYERS
Parksville-Qualicum - SNR 34% (58% last March) - 7.9 months of inventory - BUYERS
Nanaimo - SNR 52% (58% last March) - 4.6 months of inventory - BALANCED
Cowichan Valley - SNR 47% (71% last march) - 5 months of inventory - BALANCED
Before long the TC will have to report these kind of stats. It shows that the island is not immune to a downturn in sales. I suspect a lot of the sales drop in the Comox & PQ areas is due to Alberta buyers tapering off.
Not getting much action over here, eh Greg?
Greg,
It seems pretty quiet on all the blogs lately. I guess now that the market has turned folks aren't interested in stats (like mine) and news articles. Even Mohican's site has been sleepy the last week or so. Bears just want the market to start dropping fast which isn't going to happen until later this summer. Inventory keeps building and sales on PCS are slow but it will take a weak spring season and the MSM being negative to really get the sellers dropping their prices and accepting lowballs. Only a few more weeks until the April VREB report.
Hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather. - Roger
Today there were over 110 condos with prices over $300K on MLS for Victoria.
Make that 1100.
That sounded amazing so I did a quick search. At the moment there are 326 active listings sub-median (less than $300,000). Above the median, there are 743 listed.
But I suspect 1100 is within range, and probably in the next couple of months, inventory will be over that number.
Total number of condos on the MLS today is 1069.
Greg, it seems quiet on all the blogs. I think there is a lull mid-month when we have discussed last month's VREB stats to death and are waiting on the next. But I didn't even see these comments until now because although I was checking in daily I was just checking the "recent comments" section, and today I realized it is not updating properly. And the date/time stamps look wrong. Just to let you know. If there are others like me that could account for some of the lack of activity.
homewardbound-
I built this blog using drupal, and one of the downfalls apprently is this rather poor updating function. It is probably a bit much to expect visitors to clear their cache and refresh just to see whether or not there are any comments. I seem to have had a lot of little glitches lately, but even the other two local blogs that get a lot more visits than here don't seem to be too busy right now.
Ironically, I decided to use Drupal because I wanted a full fledged content management system, not just a cookie cutter blogger or blogspot blog. But I have spent a lot more time debugging and rearranging this blog than I ever would have done otherwise, and I might have written a few more posts instead.
My original idea was for the site to grow a bit, and to get other users involved, so I wanted something with that capability. That's why their is a disappearing/reappearing link to the forum. I keep thinking people might like to chip in there like they do at Patrick.net or Seattle Bubble. Unlike Blogger or Blogspot, if people are interested in real estate, they can jump in with their two cents if they sign up to post in the forum.
Realistically, since the whole site is a hobby, I don't know how much further I'm going to be able to take it. I can keep doing what I'm doing, but I doubt it's going to get a whole lot more professional looking at this point.
Anyway, I will see what I can do about the page caching. To follow comments in the meanwhile, there is a little rss button at the bottom of each comments page. If you want to get replies to a particular topic and you have an rss reader, the feeds for each comment can be gotten by hitting the RSS symbols at the bottom of each post or comment page.
Thanks for your input.