One of the things about being a Realtor is that the common greeting I receive is “ Hi John, how’s the market?”. It has been said that Canadians are obsessed with the weather and watch the weather reports like the stock market. They also seem to be obsessed with the real estate market in the same way. In fact you can take any 6 o'clock news channel weather report and exchange the temperatures and rain or snow predictions for property types and prices and it would fit seamlessly. They want to know what the temperatures were today, what are they now and what will they be tomorrow and what is the trend in the near future.
Standing in front of a map of BC the Realtor reporter can point to areas with a big capital “ H” and explain that there has been a High pressure front in Campbell River and the market volume has risen by almost 46% in 2014 which will move on down the island in the next month or so. The “ L” area around Kamloops is was a cooling trend but it is a weak front and will heat up come longer days in the spring. Unfortunately, the same as the weather reports, the only thing you can be sure of is that it will heat up in the spring and cool down in the fall. On a day to day basis they are just calculated guesses that may be completely reversed by offshore storm systems such as oil prices or terrorist attacks.
People are always looking for stats on sales on Salt Spring. Unfortunately it is such a small statistical number that you would have to look at it over years to see a firm trend rather than months. Needless to say, unit sales have gone up by about 15% in 2014 over 2013. Of course with just over 200 sales including all types of property, Single family detached homes, Townhouses, Manufactured homes in parks and building lots, a couple more sales in any one are will effect the statistics. The biggest noticeable change is the sales of properties over $1 million that jumped from 10 units in 2013 to 16 in 2014. The average sale price of these in 2014 was approx $1.7 million as compared to the average in 2013 of $1.4 million.
So the overall trend all over the province is an improving market and Salt Spring is right on target.
John Cade
Pemberton Holmes Salt Spring Island
