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Buyers’ market met with cautious spenders

Real estate sales this year up over 2009

Home-sellers: you may need to wait a year before you sell.

Despite a surge of houses listed, and despite more buyer interest than last year, Pat Kelly of the Whistler Real Estate Company said 2010 is shaping up to be an average year in terms of home sales. Typically, Whistler does between 400 and 600 transactions in a year. There are about 1,000 places on the market right now, so time on the market is about a year.

But Kelly said this is typical for a resort market.

"We are dealing with a discretionary item," he said, "and certainly consumer confidence isn't at the same level as it was early in the last decade," he said.

Since house prices haven't increased as they have in Vancouver, people are a little more cautious of investing. But if the houses are priced according to the market, sellers could get an offer right away. Kelly said he has multiple prospective buyers interested in certain properly priced homes.

"If you price in an effective manner, your house will be sold in under six months," he said.

Many people are concerned they're not getting the money they believe their house is worth, which Kelly attributes to them harking back to 2007 or 2008, when the market was much stronger.

While returns on chalets have reached between eight and nine per cent (average price for a house in 2002 was $1.225 million versus $1.574 million in 2010), homeowners of condos and townhouses haven't experienced the same return. Condos in 2002 averaged $450,000 versus $452,000 today. Townhouses averaged $709,000 in 2002 and $815,000 in 2010.

"The market went up in 2006 and 2007 to higher numbers and has now come back (down)," he said. Kelly added that because Whistler is such a small market, a few $3 million-transactions can skew the statistic considerably.

If Kelly hears people complaining that they're not selling their homes fast enough his response is typically: "I tell them their price is wrong."

He said real estate markets operate in a balanced, buyer-orientated market seven out of every 10 years. That is the case right now.

Real estate in Whistler is a direct function of tourism, typically dealing with the top five per cent income earners of Metro Vancouver. There are few international buyers, and very few Americans purchasing homes, according to Kelly.

"People are cautious right now with the way they spend money and they have to see value in what they purchase," he said.

Despite that, he said there is no concern that developers are building more houses than there are buyers. There is more buyer interest than last year, and while Whistler is dealing with a "difficult" market at the moment, he is optimistic that it will pick up.

"Prices have not changed dramatically in the last three to four years and it's looking like very good value for people who follow and understand Whistler," he said. "If I was a buyer, I'd certainly want to be in this market right now."

The market has improved from 2009, he said, which was a "low-point" in terms of sales volume. In the first six months of 2009, 176 homes were sold. That number has increased 18 per cent between January and June this year, up to 209 houses sold.

He said June has been particularly strong, though he couldn't provide exact numbers.

The Olympics and the period following it were very slow for the real estate market, which Kelly attributes to "seasonality" and "exhaustion." Not only was it the end of the snow season, but the town was experiencing what Park City referred to as the "Olympic hangover."

"It's normal to have a period when things are very slow," Kelly said, adding that the Olympics coincided with the end of the ski season, which has always been a slow time for the real estate market.

In his research of host cities, he found that it takes about nine months to a year for the impact of the Games to be felt, though there is "no one item that drives a real estate market."

"We are not independent of what's going on in the world," he said.

The American stimulus, troubles in the stock market, the troubles in Europe - these are all affecting consumer confidence in Whistler.

"As the rest of the world goes, so go we. If people's motivation is tempered by fear, they may not be in as much of a hurry to buy something."

Regardless, he said that house prices are "fair" at the moment and that "we're starting to see some indications that the Olympic exposure is starting to impact people's interest in the area.

He said there have been more foreclosures this past year than there have been in previous years but that it doesn't have anything to do with the Whistler real estate market.

"The foreclosures that we have experienced have been a result of some bad decisions by the owners," he said, adding that the rate of default on average is quite low in Whistler.

There was only minor activity in the week leading up to the HST. Because it only affects new properties, and because there aren't any new properties, Whistler hasn't been as affected as people in the city have been, where there is more new product.