Langley house price shoots up past $1.7 million

The price of a typical house in Langley soared past $1.7 million in February, even as a flood of new sellers entered a market that has been red hot for more than a year and a half.

The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s latest data for February home sales showed a record-breaking number of new listings in the region.

The benchmark price – the average price for a “typical” local house – in Langley rose five per cent in a single month from January to February, hitting $1,723,100, up from $1,641,300. The median price of a detached home was also more than $1.7 million, while the average price was $1.96 million.

The price of a benchmark townhouse rose to $831,200, a 4.8 per cent increase from $793,000 the month before, and up 35.9 per cent in a year.

Benchmark condo prices reached $580,600, up 8.6 per cent month over month from $534,400 in January, and a 39.7 per cent increase year over year.

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While price increases continued an extreme ascent that began back in the summer of 2020 and which has yet to slow down, what did change in Feburary was that more people put their homes on the market.

Across the wider Fraser Valley region, there were 3,742 homes listed for sale in February, a 75. 3 per cent jump from January’s listings, and a 14.6 per cent increase over February of 2021.

The previous high-water mark for new listings in February was back in 2016, when 3,283 homes were put up for sale.

“Although the market is still far from balanced, it is encouraging to see new listings increase again for the second month in a row,” said FVREB president Larry Anderson. “We’re hopeful that this trend will be sustained leading into the spring season as more sellers come on stream to help soften the market and provide opportunities for the many buyers who’ve been sidelined over the past year and a half.”

In Langley, there were 246 new listings of detached houses in February, a 49.1 per cent increase from the same month in 2021, and a 167.4 per cent increase from this past January.

New listings for townhouses hit 163, 14.7 per cent lower than the same month last year, but still 52.3 per cent higher than in January of this year.

There were 221 new condos listed for sale, up just 3.3 per cent from the same month last year, but a 60.1 per cent increase from January’s numbers.

The number of detached houses listed for sale is 205, higher than a year ago by 28.1 per cent, and up 138.4 per cent from the 86 available just a month ago.

But the number of available townhouses actually shrank slightly year over year, with 112 up for sale at the end of February, down from 119 the year before. It was, however, a 49.3 per cent increase over the 75 townhouses listed at the end of January.

The condo market has also been picked clean by buyers. There were 177 condos listed for sale in Langley, more than double the number from January, but still 41 per cent below the 300 that were on the market in Feburary 2021.

The sea change in homes up for sale came in the month leading up to the Wednesday, March 2 announcement by the Bank of Canada that it would raise interest rates for the first time in years, going up to 0.5 per cent from 0.25 per cent.

A raise in the Bank of Canada rate drives up all rates for new mortgages, but local mortgage broker Spencer Ennis doesn’t think it’ll have an immediate impact on the way people buy their homes.

“Everybody speaks about rates of course, everybody’s hypersensitive to them,” said Ennis.

But he said he wasn’t seeing panic buying or people trying to lock down their mortgage rate before the increase, which is expected to be the first of several as Canada’s central bank tries to use rising rates to cut the rate of inflation.

“People are buying out of need,” Ennis said, saying that for his clients it’s been a need for more space as they work at home, or have growing families, that has prompted them to get into the housing market.

He noted that fixed mortgage rates started going up last September in anticipating of potential rate hikes this year.

“I think there’s already been an adjustment to the higher fixed rates,” Ennis said.