Blog by Betsy Carstairs

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Shifting Real Estate Markets, Vancouver BC

As we head into the fall there is a definate change in the market.  It is usual for our fall market to kick in mid September BUT this year  I am noticing  a shift in the wind...so to speak. Many properties are not selling & the new listings are not flying of the shelf. Vancouver sellers are so conditioned to a rising market they can not seem to fathom that their piece of dirt's value would do anything but continue to go up. Well I am noticing that for some sellers who have adopted this mind set  they are being uncessfull in getting their properties sold. Not a problem if one can wait out the market but when owners are retiring & holding onto the old homestead & renovating their new Shangrila they have just shelved their retirement vision & taken on a new job as landlord & contractor. This is time consuming & very labour intensive soooooo the Snow Bird flight to Arizona will need to be shelved til the finances get stabelized & the properties are tenanted & the renovation is finished. 
It is interesting to me to see the Whistler owners understand all to well that their property values can & are going down (with the stock market) & they are willing to take a loss to get the property sold. A condo I just sold in the Creekside neighbourhood of Whistler is a good example of a townhome that dropped over $100,000. in the last 4 years!!!!! This has of course taken a few years in a falling market to get sellers to come to grips with reality. Perhpas this is just too foreign a concept for Vancouver owners on the heels of the very fast upswing in values that we experienced last spring. Vancouver is not a bubble insulated from the world economy & I predict that we are in for a dose of reality this winter.