Despite housing supply in the Vancouver area continuing to rise, the number of homes that changed hands in the region last month fell to the lowest levels for March since 2019.
The city's real estate board says residential sales in the region totalled 2,091 in March, a 13.4 per cent decrease from the 2,415 sales recorded in March 2024 and 36.8 per cent below the 10-year seasonal average.
The composite benchmark price last month was $1,190,900, down 0.6 per cent from a year earlier but 0.5 per cent higher than February.
Prices are "treading water," with minor improvements happening only in small pockets of the region, said Randy Ryalls, managing broker of Royal LePage Sterling Realty.
While the sector had been predicting a "fairly robust spring market," he said geopolitical unrest related to the trade war between Canada and the U.S. has caused would-be buyers to pull back.
"We've got almost a perfect buyers' market kind of scenario but buyers are not really stepping in," said Ryalls.
"There's still a fair bit of fence-sitting and that could be the 800-pound orange gorilla in the room."
There were 6,455 newly listed properties on the market in March, a 29 per cent increase from the same month last year and 15.8 per cent above the seasonal average. Total active listings rose 37.9 per cent year-over-year to 14,546.
Andrew Lis, director of economics and data analytics for Greater Vancouver Realtors, said that while sellers appear ready to engage so far, "buyers have not shown up in the numbers we typically see at this time of year."
“If we can set aside the political and economic uncertainty tied to the new U.S. administration for a moment, buyers in Metro Vancouver haven’t seen market conditions this favourable in years,” said Lis in a press release.
“Prices have eased from recent highs, mortgage rates are among the lowest we’ve seen in years, and there are more active listings ... than we’ve seen in almost a decade."
Lower sales in the Vancouver region last month were led by the detached home category, which were down 24.1 per cent to 527.
Sales of apartment homes fell 10.2 per cent from last year to 1,084, while attached home sales were down 4.6 per cent to 472.
Similar trends have started to become apparent in other regions. The Calgary Real Estate Board said earlier this week that home sales in that city were down 18.8 per cent year-over-year in March, with a slowdown across all property types.
The board said the pullback was unsurprising given the uncertainty caused by the threat of tariffs from south of the border.
Ryalls compared the trade war's effect on the housing market to the 2008-09 recession, as well as the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when demand for real estate softened.
"If you're a buyer kind of looking at the marketplace and you're seeing inventory growing and you're seeing so much in the news cycle about these catastrophic economic things that could happen, I do think that it affects the general psychology a bit," he said.
"Those things can sort of put people on the fence for a while and I think that's what we're seeing. I think people are sort of taking a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude right now."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 2, 2025.
Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press
