The average sale price of a newly built house in Abbotsford now exceeds $1 million.
New figures from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation show the vast majority of newly built houses that have come on the market so far this year have sold for in excess of $750,000.
Last year, just nine of the 131 newly built houses that came on the market sold for more than $750,000. This year, 89 such houses have sold – four-fifths of the 110 sold across the city.
Only four newly built houses have sold for less than $650,000 this year. Last year, 64 such homes had sold.
That has pushed the average selling price of new houses more than 60 per cent higher than a year ago.
The average price of $1,027,788 is up 63 per cent from $628,593 last year. The median price – the point at which half the houses sold for more and half sold for less – rose from $690,000 through the first five months of 2016 to $890,000 during the same period of 2017.
Similar numbers in Mission suggest the dramatic shift isn’t the result of a single housing development coming online.
Eric Bond, a senior housing analyst for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said the difference between the average and median suggests a trend toward more higher-end new houses being sold compared to last year.
Bond says other factors include market-wide increases to home prices, along with buyers from Vancouver moving east and comparing home prices here to those elsewhere in the Lower Mainland.
In Mission, the average price of a newly built house has risen from $573,059 in January to May of 2016 to $923,433 so far this year.
By this time last year, 40 newly built houses had sold in the district for less than $650,000. So far in 2017, just seven such houses have sold.
Average house prices in each community have also risen significantly, but not as quickly as those of newly built homes. May prices were between 15 and 18 per cent higher than last year, according to the most recent figures from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.
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