Chilliwack & District Real Estate Board

The number of homes sold through the MLS® System of the Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board totaled 194 units in February 2023. This was a substantial reduction of 52.7% from February 2022.

Home sales were 34.2% below the five-year average and 24% below the 10-year average for the month of February.

On a year-to-date basis, home sales totaled 314 units over the first two months of the year. This was a sharp decrease of 51.8% from the same period in 2022.

“Sales activity was still running well below average levels for this time of year and will likely continue to do so for the next month or two. However, looking through the seasonality it appears that home sales have been on an upward trending since bottoming out in August last year,” said Brad Latham, President of the Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board. “Obviously we’re not expecting demand to return to pre-pandemic levels right away but it is encouraging to see that trends are moving in a favourable direction. We’re still not seeing as many sellers return to the market as we’d hoped, and new listings are actually currently still in decline. It goes without saying that you can’t buy what isn’t available, and we’d like to see a rebound in inventories over the upcoming spring season.”

The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) tracks price trends far more accurately than is possible using average or median price measures. The overall MLS® HPI composite benchmark price was $683,100 in February 2023, down sharply by 24.7% compared to February 2022.

The benchmark price for single-family homes was $821,400, a substantial decrease of 26.5% on a year-over-year basis in February. By comparison, the benchmark price for townhouse/row units was $574,600, a big reduction of 20.3% compared to a year earlier, while the benchmark apartment price was $374,800, a substantial decline of 11.7% from year-ago levels.

The average price of homes sold in February 2023 was $719,334, down sharply by 17.8% from February 2022.

The more comprehensive year-to-date average price was $710,091, a substantial decrease of 19.8% from the first two months of 2022.

The dollar value of all home sales in February 2023 was $139.6 million, a big decline of 61.1% from the same month in 2022.

The number of new listings saw a substantial reduction of 52.4% from February 2022. There were 322 new residential listings in February 2023. This was the lowest number of new listings added in the month of February in more than five years.

New listings were 32% below the five-year average and 22.6% below the 10-year average for the month of February.

Active residential listings numbered 812 units on the market at the end of February, an advance of 39% from the end of February 2022.

Active listings were 6.1% above the five-year average and 1.3% below the 10-year average for the month of February.

Months of inventory numbered 4.2 at the end of February 2023, up from the 1.4 months recorded at the end of February 2022 and above the long-run average of 4.1 months for this time of year. The number of months of inventory is the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.