The beginning of March marked a noticeable increase in inquiries to our sellers and traffic on the site, signalling a continued demand for B.C. waterfront property in 2008. Despite higher prices and a fewer sales of waterfront province wide in 2007 than 2006, traffic on the site has almost doubled since last year and shows no signs of slowing. The stats listed below show unique visitors to our site last January, February and March as well as this year's numbers:
January 2007 - 5, 862
February 2007 - 6, 601
March 2007 - 7, 405
January 2008 - 9,861
February 2008 - 9,323 (leap yr)
March 2008 Forecast currently 12. 000-13, 000
Furthermore, email inquiries have picked up and sellers are reporting increased interest from serious buyers in the last few weeks.
Despite the real estate slowdown in Alberta, we are still seeing 23% of our Canadian visitors originating there, over 50% of who are from Calgary. This is exactly the same statistic as last year during the same time period, so there is obviously still pent up demand for B.C. waterfront in Alberta. In addition to these numbers, the percent of US (yes, US!) and UK visitors has increased slightly year over year.
Although I am no psychic, I expect the market to be more balanced this year than in past years, with buyers in the million plus price range taking more time to choose their property. The sense I get is that there are a lot of buyers out there with anywhere from $300, 000 up to about $$650, 000 or 700, 000 to spend on a second home that they will retire to and when the right properties come available in this price range they are snapped up quickly.