From richmond-news.com 12 May 2011 -
Realtors in the Fraser Valley are warning people in Abbotsford and Mission not to panic after property sales in the two communities dropped substantially in April.
There was 33 per cent decrease in sales for detached homes in Abbotsford last month compared to sales in April 2010. The average price for a detached home in Abbotsford went down 4.1 per cent in April 2011 from a year ago – $452,175 from $471,695.
In Mission, the number of sales fell even lower. Sales of detached homes tumbled by 42.1 per cent from April 2010, and 48.4 per cent from March to April.
The numbers were similar throughout the Fraser Valley in April, as property sales were reduced 15 per cent from what they were in April 2010, according to a report put out by the FVREB.
The recent news isn’t necessarily something to worry about, said FVREB president Sukh Sidhu.
“I have seen these ups and downs before. What’s happening in Abbotsford and Mission now is you have a buyer’s market. It’s not a trend. If you have three, four, or five months of going down then we would look at it. There could be various reasons for this.”
One of the reasons, Sidhu said, may have been the recently concluded federal election.
“That could’ve had some effect,” he said. “People were distracted, they wanted to know what was going to happen, who was going to get in . . . people like to know before they make a major purchase decision because [the election] could affect them drastically.”
[Another thing that all local buyers in recent years have wanted to know before buying a grossly overpriced house, is that prices are going up. Now that buyers in Abbotsford and Mission know that that is not necessarily the case, we'll see how many of them 'make a major purchase decision' in the coming months. Bubbles often start their deflation from the periphery, and work inwards. This one may be doing the same thing.
Ground zero/Epicentre = Westside Vancouver. - vreaa.]
I wonder if the movement from periphery to centre isn’t already occurring at much more rapid pace. Right now there is a huge amount of inventory on the West Side, and not much, if anything, is moving. The whole market has gone flat. This could be the usual summer doldrums for real estate, but perhaps too it’s a sign that this golden goose has finally been cooked.
Wait, this counts as summer?
Ha! You’ve got a point there, granite. But given that January was this year’s March (for the West Side R.E. market), I guess the whole calendar has been accelerated…. Too bad the sun doesn’t follow suit.
An investor buying at or near fair intrinsic value (by discounting future rental cash flows using an appropriate long-term inflation rate and competitive required rate of return) has zero need to panic.
A speculator buying into a 3-sigma event has every need to panic.
Just the fact that people are panicking tells you how many speculators we have as opposed to investors.
Recent election? Talk about grasping at straws…
Maybe it was buyers were transfixed by the hockey playoffs?… Indecision about the HST… Asians not having discovered Abbotsford’s airport…
Just wait until the Canucks win the cup… That’ll get people in a buying mood again!
Realtors are pathetic excuse-makers…
Federal election. Humans… always searching in vain for causality…
Denial lasts for a very long time…