Luxury home sales in Metro doubled in 2016, report says
‘Higher price spectrums’ seeing ‘unrelenting’ demand: Sotheby’s
A cool $1 million might still buy you a posh place in Montreal, but when the benchmark price for a singlefamily home on Vancouver’s leafy west side is over $3.5 million and tops $1.2 million across the entire Metro Vancouver region, as of June, how do you define luxury in this city?
Sotheby’s International Realty puts it over $4 million for detached homes, over $1 million for condo- miniums in Metro and, for the first half of 2016, demand, particularly for single-family houses, was as hot as the debate over what is pushing prices in the overall market so high.
Sales in that over-$4-million category doubled to 439 over the first six months of 2016, compared with 219 for the same period of 2015, with all but a handful being detached homes.
Demand for high-priced condos was almost as high, with sales of over-$1-million properties rising 95 per cent to 618 for the same period, 32 of which pushed them over the $4-million threshold.
“Demand for luxury real estate in Toronto and Vancouver remains unrelenting, far exceeding supply in the higher price spectrums of the market,” Sotheby’s CEO Brad Henderson said in releasing the report. Single-family homes: 403 houses sold in the $4-million-and-over range (compared with 830 houses over $1 million but under $2 million), with homes spending 34 days on the market on average and 41 per cent of buyers spending over the initial asking price. Townhouses: 407 town homes sold for over $1 million, which repre- sents a 79 per cent increase from the same period a year ago. The majority of sales (359) fell under the $2-million threshold. Only four were sold at prices above $4 million. Condos: 618 condos sold for over $1 million, with most sales (485) falling beneath the $2-million threshold. More condo sales breached the $4-million, top-tier threshold (32) than townhouses, but they were a harder sell, spending an average of 85 days on the market (as opposed to 16 days for townhouses in the same price range).