The Fraser Valley housing market in 13 charts — December, 2024

The end of 2024, brought continued declines in home prices in Langley, while in Mission, several months of growth took a step back. In Chilliwack, meanwhile, apartment prices continued their months-long dip.

For our ongoing (and evolving) monthly look at the Fraser Valley’s housing market, we’ve compiled 13 custom charts to give readers a sense of prices in four different communities and among three different home types. This feature is a recurring segment in The Current, but the charts are still a work in progress, so let us know what other data you might like to see.

If you want the raw data you can find it here: Fraser Valley Real Estate Board | Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board.

Benchmark prices for typical homes

The “benchmark price” reflects the going rate for a “typical” detached house, townhome, or apartment, as defined by each real estate board. This is an attempt to create an apples-to-apples price comparison. You can see how the Chilliwack real estate board describes its benchmark detached house here.

After rising over the first half of 2024, benchmark prices for single-family homes have dropped across the Fraser Valley through the last six months of of 2024. Across the region, the price of a “typical” detached home declined by about $30,000 between July and December. That pattern has continued even as interest rates have dipped.

Chilliwack’s benchmark detached home prices took a substantial jump in December, after several months of decline. But the scale of the change suggests it could be partially related to data adjustments.

Apartment and townhouse prices also declined across the Fraser Valley over the last six months of 2024—except for Mission, where they edged upwards. Apartment prices have come down across the entire Lower Mainland. Across the entire Fraser Valley Real Estate Board region, which spans from White Rock to Abbotsford, the benchmark price of an apartment dropped from about $551,000 in June to $534,000 in December.

Locally, Mission has been the one exception, but its prices will inevitably be influenced by those in surrounding communities.

City-by-city

Benchmark prices can be relatively slow to adjust to changes in the market, so other measures, including the median and average prices of homes, can be useful.

The median is the price of the detached home/apartment/townhome that is in the middle of the month’s tally—half the homes sold were more expensive and half were less expensive. The “average” is a simple mean, where you add all the prices together and divide them by the number of houses.

Both measures can provide broad and early indications about the status of the housing market, but they can also can be distorted by the composition of the homes sold in a given month. If an abnormally large number of older (or newer) homes sell in a particular month, that can cause both numbers to change, even if house prices as a whole are static. But that flaw can also be an asset: those figures also suggest when buyers are seeking out homes in certain price ranges. That, in turn, can impact prices as a whole.

For the general trend, we’ve focused on benchmark prices.

Langley’s benchmark prices have continued to decline across the board. But if increased median and average prices in December continue through January, that benchmark price could rebound. The higher median and average prices suggest more public appetite for more expensive houses.

Our general trend arrows in Mission, Chilliwack, and Abbotsford should be taken with a grain of salt. All three municipalities recorded higher prices in some categories, and lower values in others. In general, though, the apartment market has been relatively weak while townhome prices have been fairly consistent.

Sales and listings

Except in Mission, December saw a continued uptick in completed sales compared to the previous year.

Abbotsford saw the most year-over-year growth, thanks in large part to a 60% rise in apartment sales. Those figures can be influenced by new projects coming on the market—apartment sales in other parts of the valley were fairly level.

Sales in Mission, which had seen the most consistent price increases in the region, dropped by half in December, though the holiday season could have a bearing on that.

We have altered the charts below from previous months. Previously, we compared sales to new listings. The charts below now compare sales to active listings. We felt that the change better captures the ongoing supply-demand dynamic. (The measure is also less influenced by the fact that fewer people list homes during the holiday season.)

The figures below mimic a ratio used by the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board to determine whether a market is seen as a buyers’ or a sellers’ market. The BC Real Estate Association defines a balanced market as having a sales-to-active-listing ratio of between 12% and 20%. A higher ratio than 20% suggests a market that benefits sellers. A lower ratio than 12% favours buyers.

The pie chart is a general visual indicator of the percentage, but does not coincide with the exact ratio. (I.E. a pie chart showing one-quarter sales won’t have a 25% sales-to-listing ratio.)

You can find a chart of the ratio’s behaviour over 20 years in the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board area here.

The sales-to-listing ratio suggests that townhomes in Abbotsford and Langley have the most demand, compared to the available supply. That demand, though, has yet to exert upward influence on prices themselves.

Meanwhile, the Chilliwack apartment market is nearly in buyers-market territory.

Mission’s monthly ratio is to be treated with caution, given the size of the community and small number of sales and listings in December.