Vancouver foreclosures creep higher
April 30, 2019
Foreclosures and court-ordered sales of Vancouver homes are creeping up but still represent a small amount of listings in the struggling market, according to a Vancouver real estate agent who has been tracking the action.
Across Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, there were 83 active distressed listings in March, while total new listings on the Multiple Listing Service during the month reached 19,785.
Not all distressed listings are lender foreclosures, explained Elena Yelizarov, an agent with Oakwyn Realty. A home sale can be court-ordered due to a family breakdown or an estate settlement she explained.
In rare cases, only half of the equity in the property is offered for sale, which could signal a divorce settlement, she noted.
The City of Vancouver, which has the highest benchmark home prices in Canada, had the greatest number of distressed listings in the first quarter of 2019 across the Metro region.
“Basically we have seen a slight increase from 11 listings last spring to 13 listings this spring. The highest number, though, was in the final quarter of 2018, with 14 active listings,” Yelizarov said.
Some of the properties sold for far less than the listing price. An example is a six-bedroom, three-storey detached house on Vancouver’s west side which was listed in a court-ordered sale at $3.1 million but sold for $1.8 million.
“With court ordered sales, the original owner has up to a year to redeem the home so these do take time to come together,” Yelizarov noted
In other cases, condominiums and townhouses sold above what they were listed in a court-ordered sale. An example of this is a three-bedroom townhouse in East Vancouver that sold in March for $810,000, nearly $101,000 above its list price.
Total residential sales in Greater Vancouver plunged 46 per cent in March 2019 from March 2018 to the lowest level for March sales in 33 years, and were down 26.6 per cent in the Fraser Valley to a six-year low, according to the respective real estate boards.