Fraser Valley home values could lose another $100k this year

House prices ain’t what they used to be. (They’re still pretty expensive, though.)

In just a couple months, values have plunged precipitously.

The average single-family house in Abbotsford has lost nearly $100,000 of value in just two months, as the most dramatic increase in prices ever is followed by the most sudden slowdown in more than a decade.

That has led the head of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board to warn that prices could fall for months to come, knocking hundreds of thousands of dollars off of home values and returning them to what they were last fall.

The reversal

“With five-year fixed rates at their highest levels in a decade and residential prices, though softening month-over-month, [home prices] are still more than 20 per cent higher than a year ago,” FVREB CEO Baldev Gill said in a new press release this week. “The combination of higher rates and low inventory will present a barrier to first-time buyers and could result in even slower sales over the coming months and erase price gains from the past 10 months or so.”

If prices do decline for another 10 months, that would knock more than $100,000 off the purchase price of a house in Chilliwack, and even more off those further west in the valley.

While the market is getting worse for sellers, it’s also still challenging buyers. (The two things are related.)

Prices remain in territory that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic. Gill pointed to increased interest rates and low listing numbers as ongoing challenges for first-time buyers.

At the moment, townhomes remain out of the price range of many families. In Langley, the price of a typical townhome peaked near $950,000 in May. In Abbotsford and Mission, prices are around the $750,000 mark. Those figures are still well above where they were just six months ago. While those on the market are taking much longer to sell, prices (at least as measured by the real estate boards) have yet to drop significantly.

And while Gill suggested home prices may sag in the months to come, they would have to lose around 40% of their value to return to the point they were at two years ago.

Experts aren’t predicting that prolonged of a slump, but they are warning that home prices may decline throughout the year.