DATE

Condo flipping in Vancouver

Vancouver Condo Flipping Hits 9 Year High

Steve Saretsky -

Vancouver Condo Flipping On the Rise Is a Sign of The Times

The number of houses being flipped is generally a pretty good indicator of how much speculation there is in a housing market. When prices are rising there’s plenty of liquidity and it seems there’s always another buyer willing to pay a higher price. Flipping a house becomes perceived as risk free.

Currently we are seeing strong evidence of this in the Vancouver real estate market. I ran the numbers back in June 2017, but here are the updated numbers. For simplicity I have quantified a flip as a home that has been bought and re sold within 24 months.

Vancouver Condo Flipping Hits 9 Year High

With just a few weeks left in the year, there have been 685 Vancouver condos flipped this year. That’s a staggering 74% increase from the year previous.

Vancouver condos flipped
Vancouver condos bought and sold within 24 months.

The 685 condos flipped is equivalent to 10.9% of all Vancouver condo sales this year, a nine year high. So yeah, basically one in every 10 sales this year were owners who were cashing in huge profits.

Vancouver condos flipped
Vancouver condos flipped as a percentage of total sales.

Vancouver Detached Flipping Is Dead

Vancouver detached prices are softening. Sellers are slashing prices, and buyer FOMO is non existent. With that, house flipping has died. Midway through December there have only been 201 houses flipped, a 17 year low. You’ll notice that peak flipping activity was set back in 2015 for this latest housing boom.

Vancouver Detached house flipping
Vancouver Detached Houses bought and sold within 24 months.

A Reminder That Real Estate Is Cyclical

A friendly reminder that real estate is cyclical. Despite recent belief, house prices don’t go up in a vertical line forever. Further, speculation, foreign buyers, and euphoria are part of every housing boom.

As you’ll see, record house flipping activity in the Vancouver Real Estate market actually occurred back in 2007.

Vancouver homes flipped
All Vancouver homes bought and sold within 24 months.

Prices rise and fall, and house flipping follows that trend. House flipping spiked in 1993 at 14% of total sales before plunging to a low of 4% in 1996. House flipping spiked again in 2007 at 15.8% of total sales before falling again to 5.5% in 2013. More recently house flipping surged once again to 10.1% in 2016 and appears to be on it’s way back down.

Vancouver homes flipped
All Vancouver homes flipped as a percentage of total sales.

Stay Informed. Join My Weekly Vancouver Real Estate Round-Up.

Join the Monday Newsletter

Every Monday morning you'll receive a short and entertaining round-up of news on the Vancouver & Canadian Real Estate markets.

"*" indicates required fields

The Canadian Economy

Steve Saretsky -

Happy Monday Morning! We got a string of new data this past week confirming inflation in consumer goods, and housing are proving to be more than transitory. Canada’s consumer price index continued to drift higher with prices hitting an 18 year high, up 4.7% from last October. The recent floods in BC...

Steve Saretsky -

The calls for impending interest rate hikes continues. CIBC’s chief economist, Benjamin Tal, was out recently suggesting the Bank of Canada could hike its benchmark interest rate at least six times beginning in early 2022. “I think there is a risk of getting into the market at today’s rates,” noted Tal....

Steve Saretsky -

The BC Government announced it is looking at several cooling measures for the housing market in 2022. They have highlighted two measures. The first is an end to the blind bidding process, and the other is a mandatory “cooling off period” which will allow any buyer a 7 day recession...

Steve Saretsky -

The Bank of Canada continues to slowly drain liquidity after flooding the system with a firehose of cash during the pandemic. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem announced the end of Canada’s QE program (also known as money printing). Furthermore, in Macklems words, “We expect to begin increasing our policy...

Steve Saretsky -

Consumer price inflation ripped higher in September, surging 4.4% year-over-year, the fastest pace of price increases in 18 years. Let’s discuss this further. We have an inflation problem and the Bank of Canada remains of the view that inflation will be transitory. Although they really can’t say otherwise, for if...

Get the Saretsky Report to your email every month

The Saretsky Report. December 2022