January wasn’t too kind to the housing sector in Northern BC.

According to the BC Real Estate Association, home sales declined by 10% last month when compared to the same time last year.

The struggling forestry in the region is still being cited as one of the main causes.

On the plus side, the average house price increased by six percent on a year-over-year basis to $305,000, up from just under $287,000 in January of 2019.

However, Chief Economist, Brendon Ogmundson told MyPGNow.com the price hike has more to do with the north being undersupplied.

“It has been for quite some time and it’s going to take a while to build up not just the inventory of new homes or new home construction, but just to get inventory and resale stock up to levels where we are not going to see these types of price increases.”

When asked if the current anti-pipeline protests in the north could further create problems in the housing sector, Ogmundson is confident the fortunes of projects like Coastal Gas Link will turn around.

“I think those projects are very likely to be happening more or less on time and there is the scale of the project where any sort of delay won’t have much of an impact on the project.”

“The pipeline and the LNG facility (in Kitimat) are really the biggest drivers and the biggest kind of offset for other struggles the north has so if there is any doubt of those projects being completed on schedule or going ahead at all I think that would have an effect on housing demand.”

Over 44-hundred unit sales were tallied across the province in January, which is a spike of 23-percent when compared to the same time last year.

The average home price in BC is 725-thousand dollars.

For the full release, click here.