Northern BC Home Sales Relatively Balanced In 2017

Residential housing sales for Northern BC remained stable through 2017.

Overall across the north housing prices saw a four per cent increase from $259,331 in 2016, to over $262,492 last year.

For 2018, Chief Economist Cameron Muir sees more stability happening in the north than growth.

“Right now when we look across the north the activity in the oil and gas sector is not to the degree it was a few years ago, so that has an impact on overall employment levels and driving people to move there, so I see more stability than any significant growth in 2018.”

Residential unit sales for BC in 2017 saw a decline of 7.5 per cent compared to 2016.

Last year there was a total of 103,763 unit sales, that number down from a record 112,211 the year prior.

“So if we remember in 2016 was an all time record in terms of overall consumer demand for housing in the province. So even though we’ve seen a seven and a half per cent decline it’s still at an elevated level and certainly being backed by some pretty strong economic fundamentals.”

Now that the government has introduced tougher mortgage regulations, demand may not be quite as strong and Muir is expecting another six to eight per cent drop for 2018.