July 2016

With the reduced supply available for sale as expected there was a 9% decline to 1,174 sales last month compared to May 2016’s record setting 1,289 sales. This remains historically high and 29% higher than the 910 properties sold in June of 2015.

It seems certain that there would undoubtedly be more sales if there were more available, however, supply is short with only 2,289 available listings at the end of June, down 43% from the 4,003 available at the end of June 2015. This equates to slightly less than just a 2 month overall supply and is continuing to result in upward pressure on prices from many competing buyers.

Year over year from June 2015 to June 2015 the overall MLS Home Price Index Benchmark for homes in Victoria’s Core is up 22% from

I welcome recent measures announced by our Premier to improve the level of professionalism and consumer confidence in BC real estate.

The current consequences for unethical and incompetent agents have been too weak and have led to an erosion of our professionalism giving us all a bad name.

Most agents are good, hard working, ethical, experienced and provide valuable trusted service to their clients. The bar needs to be raised to ensure that all are measuring up to acceptable standards.

A huge and rapidly growing problem that I haven't seen mentioned or discussed is the expanding number of part time agents which was forced on us to accept by the Federal Government Competition Bureau. The result is many casual, inexperienced, under-trained,