The Hongcouver | Sold in 2013, why was this home counted as an August 2016 sale by Vancouver’s real estate board?

The REBGV’s data collection method means 948 Vancouver region residential sales were included in last month’s figures even though they were struck earlier, potentially helping understate the impact of foreign buyers’ tax

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A quirk in the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver's stats collection meant the sale of this home, next to a Buddhist monastery on Richmond's No 5 Rd, on November 22 2013, only emerged in the board's stats in August 2016, alongside about 950 other sales agreed in July 2016 and earlier. Photo: Google Earth

Published: 1:35am, 21 Sep 2016Updated: 12:14pm, 21 Sep 2016

With the imposition of a 15 per cent tax on sales to foreign buyers in Vancouver on August 2, the local real estate board’s statistics have never been more closely watched.

Realtors, buyers, sellers and journalists alike pored over the August numbers, released on September 2. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver announced there had been 2,489 sales in August, a 26 per cent decline compared to August 2015; the city’s benchmark price was said to be still rising.

But the problem is this: more than 38 per cent of the REBGV’s supposed August sales and their prices were actually agreed by buyers and sellers in previous months. A realtor who wanted to remain anonymous sent the Hongcouver blog the full list of 948 such sales, saying it was “misleading” to include in the August stats so many that were actually struck earlier. (see the list here or in the Scribd link below)

August Sales by Ian Young on Scribd

In at least one case, much earlier: one of the REBGV’s August 2016 sales - a house on Richmond’s No 5 Road that went for C$1.875million - was agreed on November 22, 2013.

[It] doesn’t make professional sense that they could use other months’ sales for the current month’s stats

A Vancouver realtor

That was an outlier. But huge numbers of supposed August 2016 sales were signed in June and July.

The anomaly is inherent in the REBGV’s stats, because they don’t actually represent when a sale is signed and a price agreed: they reflect when it became unconditional and was then submitted to the REBGV for processing (supposedly within five days).

Will enough true August 2016 sales be processed in subsequent months’ stats to make up for the 948 not-really-in-August sales? That remains to be seen.

But as of September 19, a total of 2,211 sales were known to have been actually signed in August, representing an apparent decline of 34 per cent on a year earlier. Which sounds quite a bit worse than 26 per cent, although the ultimate figure may come down a little as remnant August 2016 sales dribble in.