Vancouver’s Luxury Housing Market Exempt From Recovery

While Vancouver has enjoyed a sizeable increase in sales activity recently, it doesn’t appear to be a fuelled by an increase in Chinese capital outflows as it had previously in 2015/16. Recent analysis from BCA Research, the worlds leading provider of global macro research since 1949, shows Chinese capital outflows remain muted.

As we can see in the chart above, China’s foreign reserves remain stable and capital outflows have pulled back sharply from a few years ago. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising to see the high end luxury market continues to struggle in Greater Vancouver. In fact, the high end market has been completely exempt from the supposed ongoing recovery in the Vancouver housing market. As of September, there is 29 months of inventory for sale across Greater Vancouver for homes priced $3M and up. For context, anything above six months is considered a buyers market.

The current 29 months of inventory for sale continues to put downwards pressure on the luxury market, and remains miles away from the cycle lows of 3.6 months of inventory set back in March 2016.