A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Housing sales have slid to a 19-year low in Greater Vancouver as listings languish and prices fall to levels last seen in mid-2017. The residential benchmark price, an industry representation of the typical home sold in Greater Vancouver, has declined month over month for the 12th consecutive time. It fell last month to $1,006,400, down from a record-high of nearly $1.1-million in May, 2018, and the lowest since June, 2017. The number of listings has surged to the highest level since September, 2014."



"Shane Miller-Tait, a 32-year-old electrical engineer, said he is hoping for prices to drop further to make it possible to present serious bids. 'I could tell the market was unsustainable because of speculators and money launderers, and clearly going to come down sooner or later. I wasn’t going to be the one left holding the bag,' said Mr. Miller-Tait, who is currently renting a one-bedroom condo with his fiancée."



"For sellers of detached properties, the downturn has knocked hundreds of thousands of dollars off what they might have fetched for their homes in the first half of 2016, when detached prices set record highs in most neighbourhoods. On Vancouver’s west side, the benchmark price for detached houses sold has tumbled more than $500,000 over the past year to $2,927,600."



"Bryan Velve, who became a real estate agent in 1987, said the phenomenon among buyers known as fear of missing out, or FOMO, now seems a distant memory. 'Today, sometimes a buyer will make an offer at one price and you finally persuade the seller to take that price. But nope, the buyer then decides the market is still going to fall more and wants a cheaper price,”' Mr. Velve said."



"Sales activity for detached houses selling at more than $3-million on Vancouver’s pricey west side has hit a deep freeze. For example, only 29 detached properties sold for more than $3-million on the city’s west side in April, according to data service SnapStats. That is down 80 per cent from the 145 sales during the height of the housing market boom in March, 2016."



"Sellers now have to reduce their price expectations to lure buyers. In the nearby Dunbar neighbourhood, a two-storey house built in 2016 sold in April for $3,485,000. That property at 3439 West 22nd Ave. sold in August, 2017, for $3,860,000."



From News 1130. "Get ready to see a lot more condominiums for sale across Metro Vancouver. That’s the latest from the real estate analyst who correctly predicted two years ago that local housing prices would fall. Dane Eitel’s new research suggests buyers will have more breathing room for at least two more years."



"'We’re firmly in the down trend,' Eitel says. 'May, historically is one of the better sales months and this time, we see, basically a $150,000 price decrease based on the last five years of May prices. We’re going lower, longer. By middle of 2020, average sale prices should be right around $1.4 million for the detached market, signalling a 20 to 24 per cent [drop]. There’s some factors that could maybe cause the detached market to go even lower.'"



"After reviewing average sale prices, the founder and lead analyst of Eitel Insights says they have dropped more than $150,000. '[This] basically creates an environment where the inventory can continue to build up, thus causing more competition for the sellers,' he says."



"By the middle of next year, Eitel predicts the average cost of a detached home will be around $1.4 million and could drop as low as $1.2 million because the overall supply will soon be higher than the demand from buyers. 'There’s going to be a flood of inventory that comes up that no one’s really anticipating, which is all those investors that bought five and six properties are just going to walk away, simply walk away from their 15 per cent deposit, 20 per cent deposit. There’s going to be an absolute ton of inventory available,' he said."



"The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver is reporting nearly 15,000 homes were listed for sale in May and numbers haven’t been that high since September of 2014. Overall buyer demand remains low with the total value of purchases in May dropping almost 23 per cent under the ten year average for the month."