On May 22nd, Vancouver city council voted to approve moving forward with the redesign of downtown’s Granville Street. The makeover will cost the city (and it’s taxpayers) $20-million and will include a redesigned civic plaza (at Granville and West Georgia), custom made street furniture, a walk of fame and new pavement design.

 There has been an ongoing battle over Granville Street for decades. Charles Gauthier, of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association says, “In the last 5 - 10 years we’ve seen huge changes on the street. This is just going to spur more of it on. It’s amazing how the design has won a lot of approval.”

 Originally, one of Vancouver’s exclusive streets it was known for it’s colour and night life. Underground malls pulled businesses off the street (and customers) in the 1970s. A decision by the city in 1974 to convert the street to a pedestrian mall failed to halt the decline. More recently, the city has attempted to revitalize the area.

It has allowed limited car traffic back onto the street, and has also designated a three block portion of the street as the Granville Entertainment Zone for a concentration of bars and nightclubs. Major businesses have been moving back onto the street such as Holt Renfrew, Winners and Future Shop.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure in the area has remained out of date. This decision by the city appears to be an effort to reverse that disparity. 

 Sebastian Albrecht, Vancouver Realtor with Royal LePage Westside

The CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) released it’s Spring 2008 forecast for the Metro Vancouver region today. It’s a relatively positive forecast, predicting that the market will “moderate slightly” in 2008 and 2009.

 It points to strong economic and demographic fundamentals underpinning the market, including steady job growth, population growth and continued low mortgage rates. Meanwhile, softening consumer sentiment and “high mortgage carrying costs” (I think this is their way of saying high prices) will weaken homebuyer demand.

They predict that MLS sales will dip slightly, but remain at a historically high level through the remainder of this year and 2009. Home prices will also continue to rise, but at a slower pace than recent years (8% in 2008 and 5% in 2009), as buyers have more choice and are able to take more time in making their buying decisions.

Aside from what I already mentioned above, what I take away from this is that the CMHC doesn’t see the US housing meltdown affecting us other than in some near-term negative homebuyer sentiment. I am seeing much of what is referred to in the forecast on the ground in the market today. It’s important information to keep in mind that the market has certainly shifted…whether you are buying or selling today, you need to know where the market stands. 

Sebastian Albrecht, Vancouver Realtor with Royal LePage Westside

I’ll be posting a link to the Royal LePage Westside statistics package that is released every month. This is an excellent graphical representation for you to see what’s happening in the Vancouver real estate market.

The statistics are broken into segments for East and West sides of Vancouver. You’ll find graphs for the median selling price, listing supply, sales demand, and price history.

Vancouver West Real Estate Statistics- April 2008

Vancouver East Real Estate Statistics- April 2008

Sebastian Albrecht, Vancouver Realtor with Royal LePage Westside

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported that April 2008 saw listings outpace sales. Listings were up over the same period last year while sales dropped slightly.

There were 3,218 sales in April 2008 which was a decline of 5% from the 3,387 sales that were recorded in April of 2007 and 3.8% drop from the 3,345 sales that were reported in April 2006.

Meanwhile, new listings for all types of properties increased by 25.6% to 7,010 in April 2008 compared to 5,580 that were newly listed in April 2007.

 ”Residential sales continue to be strong, but there is a lot more choice on the market today. This is good news for a market that has been defined by record-breaking activity for most of this decade,” said REBGV president Dave Watt.

“Despite this seeming re-balance between sales and listings, it took, on average, six fewer days to sell a home in Greater Vancouver compared to the previous year, with a days on market average of 33 in April this year,” said Watt.

The benchmark price meanwhile, continued to rise. For detached properties it rose 11% over a year ago to $771,321. For apartment properties the rise was 9.6% , and 10.5% for attached properties.

Sebastian Albrecht, Vancouver Realtor with Royal LePage Westside