housing
DO SUBURBAN MARKETS EXPERIENCE MORE MARKET ACTIVITY?
Insofar as the frequency of real estate transactions is concerned, not all communities in Metro Vancouver are created equally.
For those participating in real estate as partners, or facilitators—variously referred to as agents, brokers, realtors, and advisors— there is a lot to unpack and understand when it comes to a regional housing market as complex as ours in Metro Vancouver. Where is population growing the most? Where are the most desirable neighbourhoods? What are conditions like in one corner of the region versus another? Do property tax rates differ enough among municipalities to matter to buyers? These questions are some of the most obvious ones to ask, though their answers may, at any given point in time, be somewhat elusive. Often overlooked among the more common metrics and features of housing markets is that of transaction frequency. Sure, larger communities tend to see more buying and selling activity than smaller ones, but when adjusted for population is there any major variation in sales activity throughout the region? It turns out, there very much is.
At the top of the list within Metro Vancouver is White Rock—a small community with just over 21,000 residents—where the median annual sales count per 1,000 residents over the past decade (2012-2021) was 29.9. There was much variation around this value, with the ratio peaking at 45.9 in 2021 (shocker) and bottoming-out at 21.0 in 2018 when market activity had slowed considerably regionally. Rounding out the top 5 are Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Port Moody, and the Langleys— all what one might consider to be suburban communities. At the other end of the spectrum sits the very urban city of Vancouver, with a past-decade median number of sales per 1,000 residents of only 14.1 (as the City averaged 9,699 sales….versus White Rock’s 644). At the end of the day, as realtors look for opportunities in the housing market, and for local residents looking to compare
“liquidity” in various markets, the differences in per capita sales counts appear somewhat compelling.
38
rennie.com
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online