Slow Sales Persisting On The Victoria Real Estate Board

Again this we are seeing very low numbers of homes selling on the Victoria Real Estate Board. I had a discussion with two Mortgage Broker friends of mine today about what may be causing such a dramatic decrease in volume. We talked about HST, new CMHC rules, and Consumer Confidence, we hear these terms often. We have no clear reasons as to why the numbers are so low, babies are still being born and people need to move. What gives? We did agree that across the board we are hearing “we are going to wait to see how things turn out” quite often from our friends and clients. This seems to put the onus on Consumer Confidence (just an opinion). The Local Market, sales where both parties already live here, seems to be slow but moving. The Emigration/Immigration Market seems to have dried up lately. I am not hearing a peep from the “out of town buyers” these days, this same thing happened at the onset of the recession. I feel that I am seeing a second and possibly deeper hit to our Real Estate Market from this Global Financial Crisis. Victoria is a stubborn and slow moving market, and we are typically behind the more volatile markets. Where this recent Slow-Down will take us no one knows. So far, in the bulk of the Downtown Market (family homes) we have not seen any noticeable drops in values, only in the Luxury Sector.