Housing sales in Langley were up in August compared to last year, while prices barely budged as a year defined by high interest rates continued to keep the market slow.
“I think buyers and sellers are cautious,” said Kim Phillips, a Langley real estate agent.
Now that the Bank of Canada has chosen not to raise interest rates again in its September decision, she thinks activity will pick up.
The head of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board echoed those comments.
“Many buyers are in ‘watchful waiting’ mode as they hold off on decisions in anticipating of potential further rate changes,” said Narinder Bains, chair of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.
In Langley, 83 single family homes sold in the month of August, a 25.8 per cent increase from the same month last year. There were 77 townhouses sold, a 13.2 per cent jump, and 100 condos changed hands, a 56.3 per cent increase year-over-year.
However, all those numbers were also slightly down from July’s sales data. After a burst of activity and rising prices in spring, when the Bank of Canada paused interest rate hikes, the market slowed again when the bank resumed its hikes in the summer.
Rising interest rates tends to drive up mortgage rates, making homes more unaffordable.
When it comes to the cost of homes in Langley, the benchmark price for a single-family detached home was almost unchanged from a year ago, or a month ago. After swings in price up and down, the benchmark remains at $1.638 million, up 0.9 per cent from a year ago, and just 0.5 per cent from July.
It was the same story for townhomes and condos. The benchmark price for a townhouse in Langley was $856,200, down three per cent from the same month a year ago, and up 0.9 per cent from July. Condos were going for $611,700, up 0.5 per cent year-over-year, down 0.2 per cent from July.
Phillips said that it’s not that surprising that the market was quiet through August.
“August and December are the slowest months of the year,” when it comes to housing, she said.
She said she hoped for some longer-term stability in the market by 2024.
Across the Fraser Valley, the average price for a detached home has swung back and forth wildly over the last three years.
After a brief dip in the first few months of the pandemic, the price of housing began a screaming upward climb, with the typical Fraser Valley house price rising from just over $1 million to a height of $1.9 million by late 2021.
In the spring of 2022, with interest rates rising and inflation pressuring Canadians, the bottom fell out of housing, with prices for houses losing most of their early-pandemic gains, bottoming out around $1.3 million.
A final swing, as interest rate hikes were paused this year, sent prices back up to around $1.6 million, before retreating slightly again.
A decade ago, houses in the Fraser Valley were still routinely selling for just over $600,000.
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