Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Vancouver Housing Market - is the psychology shifting?

Earlier this summer it seems like everyone I talked to about real estate thought there was only one direction prices would ever go - Up. Several co-workers we looking for places to buy before they were 'priced out' of the market, and everybody knew somebody who's condo had gone way up in value and of course no one wanted to miss out of the money train. But lately things seemed to have changed.

Yesterday the topic came up at work and the majority of coworkers are now expecting a crash or 'correction' - this is a dramatic shift from just 5 months ago, within the same group of people. A few people who were home shopping in my office bought this summer, and the one that hasn't has an 'absolute top price' for a condo that is more than $100k less than todays prices - he's interested in buying, but at todays prices he'd prefer to rent and be able to take time off to travel and snowboard. Everybody else either already owns or isn't interested in looking to buy.

I would have taken this discussion as an isolated incident, but then I saw bc_cele's comment over at the Vancouver Housing Blog mentioning a very similar experience from the very same day, and more and more I'm running into people with negative opinions on real estate in vancouver - from dissapointment at being priced out to downright ridicule of the market. With dissapointing sales numbers in July have we seen the peak of the market, or will the August numbers jump right back and start climbing again?
         

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