New website shows neighbourhood trends in Vancouver property prices
A new website that tracks residential real estate prices of individual properties across Metro Vancouver also provides a glimpse at the overall condition of certain neighbourhoods and the region as a whole.
Dubbed My Realty Check, the website is updated daily and uses publicly available MLS data to highlight whenever there is a price change on a property in the market. It tracks all types of residential – single family homes, apartments, and townhouses.
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“This is something people can do themselves when they’re looking to buy a property, but normally it’s hard to know what’s happening on a bigger scale across cities,” Stephen Ramsay, who built the website with his wife, told Daily Hive. “The site then helps by giving you a picture of trends in neighbourhoods, and across the cities in the Lower Mainland. It does this by displaying averages and plotting the changes on a map.”
One dataset tracks daily price changes while another dataset notes properties that have seen their prices decreased repeatedly. Municipal averages are also collected and compared.
“You don’t have to rely on hearsay to see that prices are going down all over the Lower Mainland, as the website clearly shows around 90% of price changes in the last couple months have been decreases,” he said.
Example: The price for 3077 West 16th Avenue in the Vancouver Westside neighbourhood dropped by -13% or $300,000 within the span of about a month, from $2.288 million on November 7 to $1.998 million on December 4. (Image credit: My Realty Check)
Based on the data he has compiled, the average price drop in November was approximately -4% and the average change on each property was a $62,000 decrease in asking price. Throughout the entire month, prices nearly fell by a collective $100 million.
Currently, Langley is leading the region for the greatest percentage price change, with Langley tracking at -5.64% followed by Richmond at -4.75%, Vancouver at -4.68%, and Coquitlam at -4.38%. However, Richmond and Vancouver were the cities that saw the greatest drop in dollar value, with Richmond falling by over $91,000 and Vancouver dropping by about $71,000.
Image credit: My Realty Check
Ramsay, who works in the IT and web development sector, says he was interested in tracking the price changes as he’s hoping to purchase a townhouse next year.
“The news has had mixed headlines as to whether prices are going down or not, although recently they seem to be acknowledging prices will change next year, so it has been helpful to see the real numbers for list prices,” he said.
Despite the general trend of falling sales prices, home valuations are set to climb in 2017. Property assessments for single-family home owners in Vancouver, North Shore, Squamish, Burnaby, Tri-Cities, Richmond and Surrey are expected to rise by between 30% and 50%.
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