Multi-million-dollar houses on the west side of Vancouver, and in West Vancouver, are selling for less than during the “speculation-driven” era of 10 years ago.
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The most expensive neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver are seeing house prices drop to levels not seen since a decade ago.
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Values for detached houses on the west side of Vancouver, and in hillside West Vancouver, are stagnating, in part because foreign capital has dwindled, say scholars and realtors.
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That is even as most prices for detached homes across Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods are higher than they were a decade ago, especially in outlying suburbs such as Maple Ridge and Port Coquitlam.
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But many houses valued in the $3 million-to-$5 million range on Vancouver’s west side, and in West Vancouver, are selling for less than they did more than 10 years ago.
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FP West: Energy Insider
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Before the B.C. government introduced the foreign-buyers tax in the summer of 2016, realtor David Hutchinson said Metro Vancouver’s real estate scene was “the wild, wild west,” leading to extreme unaffordability.
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During the “overly heated, speculation-driven market,” Hutchinson said, many buyers in multiple-offer situations were forking over more than the asking price — “paying excessively inflated prices that can’t be recouped even 10 years later.”
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The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s review of the March market shows that the benchmark price for detached West Vancouver homes has declined 4.1 per cent in 10 years. The benchmark price on the west side of Vancouver has dropped 11.4 per cent.
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A few examples: A mansion in the 2500-block of West 36th Avenue in Vancouver sold for $4.4 million in 2013. This year, it sold for less $4.3 million.
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An older dwelling on a large lot in the 2200-block of West 44th Avenue in Vancouver sold for $4.5 million in 2016. It sold for significantly less last month, at $3.1 million.
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A view house in the 2100-block of Westhill Place in West Vancouver was bought for $2.8 million in 2015. It just sold for $2.5 million.
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In his book, Housing Booms In Gateway Cities, UBC geography professor emeritus David Ley explores how foreign capital began flooding more than a decade ago into Pacific Rim cities such as Vancouver and Sydney, Australia.
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“The most expensive areas (in Metro Vancouver and other major Pacific Rim cities) rushed ahead price-wise, but then became overpriced and stagnated. The price gains trickled outwards to more affordable outlying areas. We are at the point in the cycle when the most peripheral areas are showing the greatest gains,” Ley said in an interview.
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Prices for detached houses in the outer suburb of Maple Ridge are now 90 per cent higher than a decade ago. In Pitt Meadows, they are up 80 per cent. In New Westminster, which is closer to the core, they are up by 33 per cent.
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In Richmond, which like West Vancouver attracted offshore capital from China and elsewhere more than a decade ago, prices for detached houses increased just 12 per cent from a decade ago.
