Vancouver Housing Cooling Or Normal?

There is a lot of misleading headlines in today's media regarding real estate sales. Sales are off by 45% compared to July of 2009. Now July of 2009 was a record month for real estate across BC. To compare to this July is unfair and unrealistic. So far this year we have had three major changes to Canadian financing put into effect by the government in April. These changes probably affected about 15-20% of the buying market in Canada, that can no longer purchase a home.( my estimate only) On July 1st we had the HST put into place on all new home purchases. 12% tax above the purchase price. In 2009, we did not have any of these factors in place. in my opinion the sales numbers are a normal reaction to changing conditions in the marketplace. The good news is that the market is still active and sales are still at good levels. We are now in a normal buyers market, which we have not seen for a long time.