The Victoria Real Estate Board has described June and July were “unseasonably busy months” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Victoria Real Estate Board President Sandi-Jo Ayers, the number of sales in July 2020 are the higher end of the market for a typical July.
“But we are not in a typical season. We cannot derive an ongoing trend nor forecast by looking at activity because we know the market is subjected to unusual factors amidst a health crisis,” Ayers said in a statement.
“Our spring market was delayed because of the pandemic. It is likely that our spring demand moved into summer now that folks are moving around our community more freely. Time will tell if these factors are resulting in a very compressed cycle of activity or if this trend will persist in the fall.”
A total of 979 properties sold in the Victoria Real Estate Board region this July, 38.7 per cent more than the 706 properties sold in July 2019 and 21.2 per cent more than the previous month of June 2020.
Sales of condominiums were up 11.2 per cent from July 2019 with 239 units sold. Sales of single family homes were up 61.1 per cent from July 2019 with 559 sold.
There were 2,653 active listings for sale on the Victoria Real Estate Board Multiple Listing Service at the end of July 2020, 10 percent fewer properties than the total available at the end of July 2019 and a 1.7 per cent decrease from the 2,698 active listings for sale at the end of June 2020.
“A big factor in our market right now is that we continue to see this very long term, very low supply of inventory which puts pressure on our market and prices,” Ayers said.
“Though we had a good number of new listings come to market this month, many of those listings were snapped up by buyers. Our average active listings for July over the past ten years is 3,767 but our current local inventory is more than a thousand properties less than that. Right now we have a lot of demand for single family homes – without the numbers to meet demand – prospective buyers are often entering into multiple offer, competitive situations or are unable to find appropriate properties.”
The average selling price of a single-family home in Greater Victoria in July 2020 was 1,033,706, up 23.4 per cent from last year’s average selling price of $837,781.
Read below or go here for a full list of real estate prices compared to June 2020 and July 2019.
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