On the heels of greater economic pressure and recent changes to federal housing rules, the Vancouver real estate market is seeing major declines in the listing prices of its detached homes.

Latest official figures revealed that those who purchased single-family detached residential properties in Metro Vancouver last month spent an average of $1.5 million, but CTV Vancouver News reported that some homes in the eastern portion of the city sold for far below that price.

One such house was situated in Renfrew Heights, initially listed at $1.36 million in August and ultimately sold for $800,000 in November.

Tom Davidoff, associate professor with the Sauder School of Business at UBC, said that Vancouverites should expect this trend to continue.

“Sales have been slow and we’re starting to see prices tick down,” Davidoff noted. “I think we can say the market is facing very significant headwinds. We have the foreign buyers’ tax hitting an important part of the market. We’ve got new qualification rules for mortgages coming down for lower-end buyers.”

The takeaway? The next few months should prove to be a “great opportunity” for those looking to get into the mid-range market.

“There’s not a lot of selection, but there are some cracks in the market. There are some good deals right now,” the academic stated.

Sutton West Coast real estate agent David Hutchinson, who has been looking at plummeting prices for some time now, said that a considerable number of detached homes (some even freshly refurbished) have been listed at lower than $1 million.

“If you want to sell, you have to be priced sharply, and you see a lot of price drops,” Hutchinson told CTV in an interview.

“There’s not this crazy deluge of offers coming in like before, when you could price it below the market value and wait for all the offers to come in,” the agent added. “Buyers are being a little more picky now and you didn’t see that before.”

Listing Prices of Vancouver Homes Plummeting Amid “Significant Headwinds” by Ephraim Vecina | Canadian Real Estate Wealth