More and more homeowners in Langley and its neighbours put their properties up for sale in April, as the number of homes on the market reached levels not seen since before the pandemic.
Regionally, there were 7,313 homes of all types listed for sale across the Fraser Valley, from North Delta through to Abbotsford and Mission, according to statistics released by the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB).
That’s the highest number of homes on the market for any April since 2019, when there were 7,870 homes for sale.
Meanwhile, sales were up from March, but still five per cent below the rate seen in April 2023.
Langley saw a significant jump in the number of homes of all types being put up for sale in April.
“A little bit of a flood,” said Alex Maldeis, a realtor with The Valley Group, noting that the amount of new inventory that appeared in April was significant.
His team had a record month, with the most transactions ever in April, and part of that was just a lot more choice for people in the market for a home.
There were 254 new listings for single-family homes in Langley last month, pushing the number of active listings up to 401, almost double the 201 that were listed for sale in April 2023.
There were 193 townhouses newly listed for sale, a 94.9 per cent increase year-over-year and bringing active listings to 191, a 105.4 per cent jump from last year’s numbers.
Condos saw the slowest rate of increase but the 253 new active listings in April was a 66.4 per cent over the new listings in April 2023, and brought active listings up to 345, a 54 per cent jump over the same month last year.
Sales were also up in Langley, but not at the same blistering pace.
There were 102 sales of single detached homes, 106 of townhouses, and 101 of condos. The sales of detached homes and townhouses were up from the same month last year, but condo sales were actually down 13.7 per cent from April 2023.
Sales of detached homes were up 18.6 per cent from March, townhouses were up 16.5 per cent, and condos up just one per cent.
Prices ticked up for all three categories of homes compared to last year.
The benchmark price for a detached house – the average price for a “typical” house – was $1.648 million in April, a 6.8 per cent jump from a year ago, and up 1.5 per cent from March.
Townhouses were going for $863,600, a 6.5 per cent increase from the same month a year ago, and up 1.4 per cent from March. Condos were $625,100, up eight per cent from last year, and 0.3 per cent from the previous month.
Maldeis noted that the market from August 2023 right up the start of this year was quite slow.
“You had to be quite aggressive as a seller,” Maldeis said.
Then the market picked up, and now more people are listing their homes.
“I think things are going to balance out,” he said of the near future, after several years of fairly wild ups and downs.
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