Landcor came out yesterday with their Quarterly Residential Sales Summary for 2008. The major highlights of the report showed that sales dollar value has declined in three areas: Vancouver Island, Fraser Valley and BC North/Northwest, while Greater Vancouver, the Okanagan and the Kootenay regions saw an increase in total sales value compared to the same period in 2007. Overall, total sales value in BC increased 5.6% over 2007 while the total number of actual sales decreased by 11.38%. In addition, of interest to the recreational property market, sales to Albertans decreased by 21% in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period last year.
While you can't argue with the hard stats, we still feel that there is a great deal of interest in BC from Albertans. Stats on our site collected from April -June 2007 and the same period this year show the % of Albertans has only dropped by 4%, and the number of Albertans visiting the site has actually increased year over year from 5734 last year to 5970 this year (same time period mentioned above). Moreover, anecdotally we have Albertan friends who still want to purchase here and are finding competition from other Albertans when they try to make offers. So the Albertans are still out there looking. We can't deny that the Albertan real estate downturn has affected the BC recreational market, but I don't think it has dampened the desire of Albertans who want to purchase property in BC or retire here-perhaps just delayed things a bit and lowered their purchasing power (for those dependent on the sale of their own home to buy here).