Keeping it Real
Meet Jacquie McCarnan your host for Keeping it Real, the Vancouver and area residential real estate podcast that aims to demystify all things real estate in our crazy market.
Jacquie has been a licensed Realtor since 2016 and, in that time, has come across just about every scenario you can think of in our residential market. From hoarder homes to those for sale by owners to crazy strata situations and more, Jacquie provides real stories to help you navigate real estate in Vancouver and surrounding areas.
Each episode of Keeping it Real is short and to the point and provides you with great information about the topic discussed. Jacquie is always available to answer more in-depth questions and is happy to feature your own experience in future episodes.
Episodes also contain additional, non-real estate info about local businesses, experiences, and hidden gems around town that will make you sound like a local expert!
If you live in Vancouver or surrounding areas you know that the #1 thing people talk about is real estate (then the weather) if you want to sound knowledgeable and up to date on the real estate part listen weekly to hear topical issues that affect our market. We try to pick the most interesting and current issues to demystify each week and eagerly anticipate your input.
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Keeping it Real
Ep. 44 North Van Market Stats with a Twist!
Hey everybody, welcome back to Keeping it Real, the Vancouver and area residential real estate podcast that aims to cut through all of the noise that you hear about real estate in the Lower Mainland and let's face it, there's a lot of noise. My name is Jackie McCarnan. I am a North Vancouver residential realtor. I work in North Van and in the city and in Burnaby and a little bit of New West and Port Moody and all the way up to Squamish. So if you have any questions about those markets, I will always be happy to help you, and if you have questions about other markets, I can refer you to somebody who is going to be able to help you with those. Every once in a while. On Keeping it Real, I like to do a full market update, but today is going to have a little bit of a twist. I'm going to show you what the stats say, but also how those statistics can be manipulated and used in different ways to give different impressions of what and I'm making air quotes when I say this the market is doing, say this the market is doing. Also, my voice is a whole lot lower today because I have a cold that my 23-year-old daughter gave me as a gift for Valentine's Day. What a pal. So let's jump right in.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there are a whole bunch of metrics in real estate, obviously, and I think the ones I mean not I think, I know that the ones that matter the most when we're determining what kind of a market it is and when I say that I mean between a seller's market and a buyer's market and a balanced market the biggest metrics that we need to look at are how many new homes were listed and how many were sold in a specific time. The problem with this metric is that when a realtor has a home on the market for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, they very often will take it down for a few hours or a day and then relist it. So it becomes then a new listing, which is great for the seller, because then it gets that listing out to everybody who's got that in their search parameters. But what it does is it really skews these numbers, and the only way to get these numbers 100% accurate would be to scrub through them individually, and no one's going to do that. So when we look at these numbers, we have to assume that a small percentage maybe 10%, depending on what the market's doing might be relists instead of new listings.
Speaker 1:We call this metric sales to listings ratio and I just decided to grab it for February, from February 1st to February 14th Happy Valentine's Day. I wanted to give you guys a snapshot of what's happening in the North Vancouver market specifically so that I can explain how these metrics work. All right, so for detached homes, we have 36 new listings and again could very well include listings that have been on the market before but the realtor has relisted in order to get some fresh eyes on that. And of those 36, we have 36, and then we have six sales. So those sales could be from listings that are older. But that's how it's used to determine the sales to listings ratio. And 36 to 6, the sales to listings ratio is 16.67%. Anything over 20% is considered a seller's market. So this would be that 16.67% would be considered a balanced market, meaning that both buyers and sellers have kind of the same amount of I don't know ability to get the deal that they want in this market. But again, it doesn't really tell the whole story. Let's say that instead of 36, we figured out that 30 were actual new listings and six were relists. 30 new listings and six sales puts us at a 20% sales to listings ratio, which is then a seller's market.
Speaker 1:So we don't really know for sure with these statistics if we are actually in a seller's market or a buyer's market, but I would suggest that we are firmly actually in a seller's market for single family homes. But when it comes to attached homes, which we obviously we have more of almost always because there are more apartments and condos than there are single family homes. So the statistics say that we had 106 new listings in North Vancouver and 10 sales, which is a 9.43% ratio, which is very much so in a buyer's market. So if you were my client and you had a single family home for sale and you wanted to downsize which makes up a huge amount of my business people who want to downsize I would say that now is a spectacular time for you to sell your house, because we are in a seller's market for single family homes and a buyer's market for condos or townhouses. So I mean it puts you in the driver's seat in both transactions.
Speaker 1:That's not the only metric we look at, though. That's not the only metric we look at, though. For example, I wanted to compare last January to this January. So January 2024 to January 2025. So, with regard to the median sales price of years and it's really not accurate as far as value of your home goes so in terms of pricing, the median sales price for homes in North Vancouver in January 2025 was $2,239,000. $2,099,000. So we are seeing an increase of about 13% in home value over last year. Again, great for sellers. And if you're somebody who's been thinking about buying a single family home, I mean it looks like they're still going up in value, which is crazy, of course, because things are so expensive here. But I think that you know if you're waiting to get into the market the single family home market you might be surprised that the prices are continuing to improve for single family home owners.
Speaker 1:You can almost set your watch by the behavior of the market in Vancouver, north Vancouver. A lot of it and this is actually more opinion, but based on statistics a lot of it has to do with weather. So when we talk about the spring market, I mean we could have easily been in our spring market in January this year because the weather was so nice, but then, of course, february hit and there was tons of snow and market activity slowed down as far as buying goes, but it didn't really slow down. As far as listings go, we were getting tons of listings in February. So I think a lot of people are gearing up for and I'm going to make air quotes you can't see me because this is voice but they're gearing up for the spring market, which is always the best market in Vancouver. For those of you that are already my clients, you know that I am a big proponent of strategy and timing when it comes to real estate and I think that it's important to recognize that there are certain things that happen in the market that will make it either a great time to buy or a great time to sell, or both, and I want to just quickly go over those and let you know. So, in a current market overview, we have increased activity. So in January 2025, we saw almost a 30% rise in total sales over January 2024, which means that the buyers are now buying.
Speaker 1:We're coming into the spring season, which is generally the best time to list your house. As far as weather goes, we're looking at things are going to start to mellow out a little bit after the last couple of weeks. Economic factors like interest rates we're looking at. You know we've had considerable cuts in the interest rates over the last eight months, 10 months, which obviously has a positive effect on buyer activity.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, again, we have trade uncertainty with the US. We don't really know what's going to happen there. I mean, I really, really want to hope that we're not going to have a big whack of tariffs to worry about and even without the tariffs, we are already seeing the effects of some of the new policies from the South when it comes to buyers up here or sellers up here in Canada, because a lot of people here work for American companies and a lot of people are getting laid off or straight out fired. I even know of I have a friend who works for USAID and or USAID and they went to work and everything was shut down. So there's so much uncertainty, particularly for people working in American companies, that it's a little bit. That's something that needs to be considered. It might lower the buyer activity in Vancouver. We're going to find out pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:So the important things to know if you are thinking about selling or have been thinking about selling, is that, yes, now is a great time to sell your house and downsize into a condo Absolutely Probably the best time I've seen in the last two years. What's going to happen after that, we don't know, but if you're that particular person who that's, what you want to do is sell your family home and get into a condo. This is perfect for you. If you are a buyer looking for a single family home and get into a condo, this is perfect for you. If you are a buyer looking for a single family home, you're going to have a lot of inventory to choose from, because we have seen quite a bit of inventory come on the market. You're also going to have some competition, but it's not to the point just yet where we are seeing tons and tons of multiple offers, like we did back in 2022. And tons of multiple offers, like we did back in 2022. So it's actually a really good time to get active in the real estate market.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people who have been waiting to have the perfect timing, which there's not really any such thing. I think maybe if we didn't have what's happening in the States, we would be much closer to perfect timing for selling the home. But I mean, let's face it, we can't control some of these factors, but if you have been thinking that maybe you missed out in 2022, definitely you're going to recoup some of that Again. Air quotes loss. You're going to recoup some of that Again. Air quotes loss. Yeah, as many of you know if you've been listening to the podcast or been following along on my socials I have recently launched the Canadian Women in Real Estate Foundation, a foundation for women across Canada to find more leadership positions within the real estate industry.
Speaker 1:60% of realtors in Canada are women, but only 30% are making policies, which makes it kind of sketchy for us to work in this industry, particularly when it comes to things like doing open houses by ourselves or doing showings by ourselves. So we at the Canadian Women in Real Estate Foundation are dedicated to helping women change policies to make this industry safer and more inclusive. If you're interested in finding out more about the Canadian Women in Real Estate Foundation, it's c-wireca is the beta website which we are working on every single day, and we are having two events one on February 24th it's a webinar and one on March 5th that the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board is allowing us to host at their facility, which is very exciting. So we have backing from, we have support from the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board and, if you are interested in this at all, if you're a realtor or if you work in real estate or real estate adjacent, please join us and we will give you a huge amount of info about what CYR is all about. I have to keep these short and sweet because, again, I am working on the other thing and I have quite a few clients that are really thinking about listing in the next couple of weeks. So that's awesome, but there's always room for one more. So if you want some more information, definitely let me know.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much for tuning in. I love to get your feedback. You guys have been great about sending me info, and this is kind of the top thing that people ask for is what's happening in the market. I like to drill it down so that it's the North Vancouver market and give you the information that is relevant to you. You can get Keeping it Real anywhere. You get your podcasts, spotify or Apple Music, or you can go over to my website, northvanhomesalescom slash podcasts, and there you will find all kinds of other cool stuff, like buyer's guides or seller's guides, which are really helpful if you are thinking about buying or selling. I mean, go take a look at those first, even before you call me. And finally, I'd just like to say happy Valentine's Day to everybody, whether you have a special Valentine or not. Maybe treat yourself to something great like, I don't know, chocolate. That's what to say. Happy valentine's day to everybody, whether you have a special valentine or not. Thank you.
