I Just Love Analyzing the Real Estate Market 

It Started in 1982

In 1982, I helped design an early Home Price Index with $65,000 in funding from the Real Estate Board.

The problem was that the original system averaged very different homes together. An expensive oceanfront home in the Ocean Park/White Rock area could be averaged with a mobile home on a leased lot.

The Real Estate Board did not have the money at the time to divide the market into enough price and property groups. The plan was to improve the system later, but it never happened the way I believed it should.

So I spent the money to build a better system using paired sales.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Paired sales are simple. If a home sells today, we look back to find out what that same property sold for previously.

Now we are not comparing an oceanfront home to a mobile home. We are comparing the same property then and now. That is what I call comparing apples to apples.

Then We Clean the Data

Even paired-sales data has to be cleaned carefully. We remove properties where major changes could distort the numbers, including:

• Homes rezoned for multifamily development
• Properties that were substantially rebuilt or changed
• Homes that burned down or were replaced
• Unusual sales that do not represent normal market value
• Properties that no longer represent the same type of real estate

17 Lower Mainland Markets

Vancouver Market Reports tracks home-price changes across 17 Lower Mainland cities and markets. We publish the major market statistics with my analysis and forecasts, and approximately every two weeks we update the numbers again.

We Show the Winners and the Losers

Which markets are going up? Which are going down? Where are sales improving? Where are prices weakening? And most importantly, what is happening to the value of your real estate?

After more than four decades in real estate, I still enjoy opening the newest numbers and discovering what the market is telling us. Good real estate decisions should start with good data.