According to a BCREA news release this week, gas and food prices are slowing home sales as buyers take a wait and see approach to purchasing in the current housing market. Despite residential unit sales decreasing 31% from May 2007, overall average prices in B.C. are still up 6 percent from last year. In the meantime, major banks raised their mortgage rates by 1/2 percent last week, which may add to the slow down.
So what does this mean for the recreational market? Judging on traffic to the site (which is still well above last year's numbers) and email inquiries to our sellers, well-priced properties are still creating quite a stir. We have also seen this in the local market in Courtenay. I believe the key to selling right now is for sellers to price their home competitively. It seems there are still a lot of buyers out there who are taking their time to purchase, unless they see a home/property they feel is exceptional value. When a property like this comes up, it still gets snapped up and in some cases, there are even still bidding wars.
So what is a seller to do? If you purchased a few years ago, no doubt, your home value has increased a large percentage already so make sure your property is show room perfect, follow some staging tips, and price competitively. Before you list, go to some open houses in the neighbourhood and check out the competition. Imagine yourself as a buyer-would your home stand out as an exceptional value when compared to the others?
Finally, advertise, advertise, advertise (on Waterfront West-subliminal message). But seriously, make sure that your home is out there-on the internet (in more places than one preferably), in the local real estate papers and anywhere else you can think of. For recreational properties, reaching an international audience may start to become more important again as local buying slows down. Our stats show, the top 5 countries for buyers (besides Canada) for waterfront real estate in BC are US, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands so if your property is already on our site congratulations, you are reaching this audience.
All in all, it's still a great market to be in right now. There are still a lot of buyers milling about but with more properties to choose from and a better chance to make a more informed purchasing decision. Properties that show well and are priced competitively are still selling, so in most cases, sellers can still realize excellent profits given that they purchased their properties a few years back.