B.C. home sales recover in second half of 2019, still down from 2018
Credit to Author: Stephanie Ip| Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 21:44:09 +0000
While home sales recovered in the second half of 2019, the year’s total figures were still down from a year earlier.
A total of 77,331 homes were sold in B.C. last year while the annual average price was $700,460.
Those were down 1.6 per cent and 1.6 per cent, respectively, from 2018, which saw a total of 78,516 homes sold and an annual average home price of $711,564.
“Housing markets across the province staged a strong recovery in the second half of 2019,” said Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist with the B.C. Real Estate Association, which issued the numbers in a report Wednesday. “This sets up 2020 to be a much more typical year than what markets have experienced recently.”
Last year’s strong second half can be seen in the numbers for December 2019, which showed a massive increase over the same month in 2018. A total of 5,218 homes were sold in December 2019, a 48.9 jump from December 2018. The average residential home price also increased 8.7 per cent to $755,165 in December 2019.