Unit sales and the median sales price of the local real estate market have been climbing since the last time The Standard covered this topic, in December 2016.
Data collected by the Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board (CADREB) kept track of the market since January 2014. Its data for Hope also includes Boston Bar and Lytton.
According to the data, sales of single-family resale homes in Hope, Boston Bar and Lytton have started increasing from a low of five unit sales in December to a high of 28 in May. Prices for single-family resale homes have also climbed in the same way, with a low of $255,500 in December and hitting a high in April, at $363,750. April’s sales price set a three-year high for the local real estate market. The figure for May was a bit lower at $340,700.
Realtors Hans Jeschek and Wayne Dyble both noted that the inventory for Hope is low. Dyble said that normally, Hope will have 150-180 homes on the market. That number is down into the 50s recently.
“So the number of homes for sale has decreased substantially,” said Dyble. “Strangely enough the number of houses that have sold compared to 2015-2016 are very close for April and May.”
In those two months in 2015, there were 47 single-family resale homes sold. For 2016, the number was 50, and in 2017, the number was 46.
Jeschek said Hope’s real estate market is “still busy.” Jeschek said that homes do not stay on the market for long after being listed.
Hope’s real estate market usually sees a fall in house hunters in the winter, but Dyble noted this winter saw little of a slow down.
“Quite often [during] winter, things just about slow down to a stop sometimes and it hasn’t,” said Dyble. “Even with all that snow we had, we still had people coming out and driving around in two feet of snow showing houses, which was kind of unusual.”
Jeschek said that he noticed a slow down over the holidays before a rebound in February.
Both Dyble and Jeschek do not foresee any federal or provincial policy that could affect the real estate market.
