July 21 Market Update

MLS numbers update courtesy of the VREB via Marko Juras. These numbers are for the Victoria Real Estate Board's reporting area, including Sooke, Shawnigan Lake and the Gulf Islands.

	July 2013				July 2012
	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4
Unconditional Sales	120	256	381		523
New Listings	315	622	919		1242
Active Listings	4762	4817	4855		5178
Sales to New Listings	38%	41%	41%		42%
Sales Projection	552	588	584
Months of Inventory					9.9

The third week of last July was the first week when sales started to seriously slow, dropping to 113 for the week from rates of 138 and 120.  This was most likely due to the mortgage rule changes starting to hit, and continued to make up the worst late summer, fall, and winter in well over 10 years.

No major mortgage changes yet this year (aside from the lenders becoming more and more nervous), and there is also no matching slowdown in sales, with last week hitting 125 (after 136 and 120 the weeks before).  Of course as the selling season winds down, sales will naturally start slowing regardless of the mortgage market.  Surprisingly enough, listings are up over last year by about 7%, hence our sales/list coming in a bit under.