Greater Victoria house prices rose in February amid supply crunch

According to the real estate board, 718 residential properties changed hands in Greater Victoria in February. That’s 16.8 per cent less than the 863 properties that sold in February 2021. (CTV News)

Demand for real estate in Greater Victoria continues to outweigh the supply, according to the latest figures from the Victoria Real Estate Board.

According to the board, 718 residential properties changed hands in Greater Victoria last month. That’s 16.8 per cent less than the 863 properties that sold in February 2021.

The board says sales of condos and single-family homes are down but the costs are still rising.

The benchmark price of a single family-home in the City of Victoria is now $1,196,300. That's up 26.1 per cent from $948,500 in February 2021, and up slightly from January's value of $1,161,500.

“We did see some more inventory coming onto market this month which was wonderful, but not enough for the demand that we’re still facing,” said VREB president Karen Dinnie-Smyth.

The real estate board says meaningful government intervention is needed to help increase the housing supply.

“So we need to have changes maybe at a municipal government level to help the municipal government bring some slight densification into play,” said Dannie-Smyth

“We have the cooling-off period being talked about, we have the foreign buyers tax, speculations tax, vacancy tax, and those haven’t squashed the demand, so we need to get supply back into the conversation, primarily.”

According to the VREB, some short-term relief may be just around the corner as more homes are typically listed in the spring.

“This is a time of year where we start to see a little more inventory come onto the market so if we do get our general increase that we sort of typically expect to see through spring, prices may level out somewhat,” said Dinnie-Smyth.

“If we don’t see that inventory increase, then yes, we can expect to see prices continue to rise."