The flop

Remember the bounce in Vancouver realtors’ steps last month when sales popped higher?

Well, fuhgeddaboudit. They’re back driving Uber and building porches.

“Last month, we reported gains in home sales across all home types, raising the question of whether demand would continue to build into the summer,” admits local realtor cartel data nerd Andrew Lis. “Instead, July sales were down nearly ten per cent, led by an 18 per cent drop in apartment sales, confirming to market watchers that the June momentum was not sustained.”

Nope. Dead cat bounce. You chuck a deceased feline off a balcony in DT Van and, yes, it bounces. But it’s still dead.

“Over the past few years, the sales activity story has often been one step forward, one step back, and the June and July data are a prime example of this pattern,” Lis adds. And a breathless city responds: but now what?

Just days after much of the country’s housing market seemed to be in recovery, what’s the deal with this pivotal city where the hopes and dreams of newbie buyers go to die?

Sales fell 9.8% last month. Almost 19% under the long-term average. But new listings also faded, by 11.5%. Overall there are about 16,500 properties listed for sale, a whopping 27% beyond the expected average. Compare that to the GTA, with six million people and 26,000 available properties. Toronto has twice the pop of YVR, so it’s easy to see the Left Coast city is swimming in unsold inventory.

More bad news is the sales-to-active-listings ratio. It’s down to just over 10% for detached homes and 14% for condos. Once again the market is falling into buyer’s territory when only one in ten family homes (with dirt) finds a buyer in a month.

And what of price?

The average detached is still priced at $1.8 million (down 7% from last year and 1% from last month). The overall benchmark price is just under $1.1 million, off 6% from a year ago and not much changed from June.

The largest price change (down 7.5% year/year) is happening with condos – where sales tanked in July by almost 18%.

What shall we make of this?

Are the doomers right and prices will fsoon all off a cliff as sellers capitulate? Or, is this a summer pause?

If the angry houseless jilted kiddos are correct, we’re witnessing the result of sheer unaffordability, economic tensions, Trump tariffs, too-high mortgage rates, job stress induced by AI, greedy Boomer sellers and corrupt governments at all levels working hard to keep prices aloft.

All that hunts. But none of it’s new. Those conditions existed in June, and for the past many months. If we were truly on the road to realtor perdition, with a 50%-off sales in Kits or North Van, it would have happened by now. In fact, recent data has been headed in a sunnier direction – with big gains in employment, stable inflation, better economic growth and stable interest rates. Meanwhile we’ve also been working through a million households refinancing their mortgages, mostly at higher levels than five years ago – and that has caused no crisis, either.

What would precipitate a collapse now?

The most probable cause: a rapid increase in interest rates. That would be the Bank of Canada’s response to an unexpected surge in inflation.

But, not happening. The Iran war will end (Trump hates it). Energy prices will fall. And the Canadian economy faces more trade uncertainty, which would prompt the CB to ease the cost of money, not tighten up. Sure, rates could rise a tad next year, economists figure, but the event would be a piffle.

More profound would be an economic reversal. Trump goes ballistic. The trade deal collapses. Serious tariffs jack the jobless rate. The dollar craters. Consumer confidence is shattered as recession looms and house sales plummet – along with prices. Of course, nobody would be buying then – too chicken, thinking as they do now, that valuations might fall further.

Plausible? Maybe. Realistic? Nope.

Yes, more melt is possible. But you should still move to Edmonton.

About the picture: “This is a shot of of our second dog from when she was still a puppy,” writes Ralph. “Her name was Duchess. She was a Keeshond. I submitted this picture to a local pet photo contest and won some kind of prize with it. Keesies were on barges in Holland. They stood look out at the bow and guarded the cargo as needed. So they have little need of miles of walking. My asthmatic wife has been able to out walk all of our Keesies any day of the week. So they make great apartment dogs. On the other hand, they expect to be around their family. Leaving them alone all day would be torture for them. When I was downstairs and and my wife upstairs, Duchess would stand at the top of the stairs and turn and turn trying to figure out where to be, or how to get us into the same room.”

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘[email protected]’.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2026/08/11/the-flop-2/