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Sooke at low end of high home prices

Sooke at low end of high home prices
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Clayton Morris, a realtor with Pemberton Holmes, said that with property inventories at record lows, multiple offers still rule the day, and buyers feel stressed. (Contributed - Clayton Morris)

If you’re looking to buy a home, the good news is Sooke has the lowest average price in the Capital Region.

The flip side of that is that only three municipalities have an average price below the million-dollar mark.

According to the latest figures from the Victoria Real Estate Board, Sooke, the Malahat area and Esquimalt remain the only three places in the VREB coverage area with an average cost below $1 million, with Sooke coming in at $887,500 for a single-family home based on the home price index.

Oak Bay remains at the high end, with an average price of $1.659 million, with the Highlands next at $1.515 million.

More than 830 properties were sold in March, a 29 per cent drop from March 2021 but still an increase of 16 per cent comp-area to February.

VREB president Karen Dinnie-Smith described March as a record-breaking month because of limited listings.

March had the lowest number of active listings in a month, beating last year’s record low.

Although during the past five years, the average number of active listings at the end of March was 1,864, this year’s total was just slightly more than 1,000, Dinnie-Smith says.

This year, she anticipates that the spring market will be uncertain, with sales and listings possibly partly depressed by reasons related to COVID and travel restrictions, which make it difficult to predict what the spring market will be like overall.

Dinnie-Smith says that rising interest rates and concerns about efforts by the government to impose new barriers such as cooling-off periods, inflation, and record-high prices continue to pose challenges to the market.

Clayton Morris, a realtor with Pemberton Holmes, said that with inventories at record lows, multiple offers still rule the day, and buyers feel stressed.

“I know the government is talking about bringing in a cooling-off period, which would allow buyers to do complete inspections and due diligence,” he said.

As a former home builder, another change that would be welcome would be streamlining and accelerating the approval process for construction.

“The real estate industry doesn’t benefit from an overheated market,” Morris said. “People should be able to realize that a realtor is the best protection they have during these challenging times.”



editor@sookenewsmirror.com

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