Insight into Vancouver's real estate market

Insight into Vancouver’s real estate market

By Special to MoneySense on July 8, 2016
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

According to a new provincial government report, just over 5% of real estate purchases in metro Vancouver were made by foreign buyers, and more

NorthVancouverPrayitnoFlickr

A number of reports were issued Thursday about Vancouver’s red-hot real estate market. Here are some of the key findings from those reports:

— Airbnb says the average host in Vancouver makes an income of about $6,500 annually by occasionally renting out space in their home and uses at least half of what is made to pay for their rent or mortgage, or to cover the cost of household items like groceries.

— The provincial government says just over 3% of sales between June 10 and June 29 involved foreign buyers, mostly from China. Forty-seven of those transactions occurred within the city of Vancouver while 260 involved properties around Metro Vancouver.

— Sotheby’s International Realty Canada says in the first half of this year, there was a 100% increase in the sale of homes that cost more than $4 million in Vancouver, as 439 properties in that price range changed hands.

— Canada’s largest credit union warned that young workers who have long since abandoned hope of owning a home in the Vancouver area are now being priced out of the city’s rental market. Vancity says only the Marpole and East Hastings neighbourhoods remain affordable for the average worker under 40, earning less than $40,000.

— The Canadian Press

Foreign nationals make up 5.1% of home buyers in Metro Vancouver, according to the first set of real estate transaction data released by the provincial government today.

“This confirms data provided to us for several years through our monthly member market poll,” writes the REBGV press release.

“We wrote the Minister of Finance earlier this year asking him to again track the residency of home buyers in BC and we applaud the government for taking action on this issue,” Dan Morrison, Board president said. “The housing affordability challenge we face is of critical importance to all of us in the region and it’s important that this debate be based on facts. We look forward to the province releasing larger data sets in the future to further inform this conversation.”

The government will continue to release this data each month. The current set covers transactions between June 10 and June 29, 2016.

The data is collected when owners register their property at the Land Title Office and the Property Transfer Tax is paid. Individuals must disclose if they’re a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, or if their citizenship if not Canadian. Corporations must disclose their directors’ citizenship.

The report is available here.

Additional findings include:

• 10,148 residential real estate transactions in BC, totalling more than $7.6 billion.

• 337 transactions (3.3%) involved foreign nationals, worth $390 million (5.1%).

• In Metro Vancouver, there were 5,118 transactions worth nearly $5.4 billion, of which 260 involved foreign nationals (5.1%), worth $351 million (6.5%)

• In the City of Vancouver, there were 1,139 transactions, totalling more than $1.6 billion. 47 of these involved foreign nationals (4.1%), worth $64 million (3.9%).

— From an REBGV press release