The final three months of 2020 were the worst as far as COVID-19 cases in Burnaby.
Those rising numbers brought with them more lockdowns, including real estate agents being “urged” to halt open houses, according to one item on the website of the Real Estate Council of B.C.
And yet, those lockdowns and restrictions didn’t stop real estate sales and prices from jumping, according to the latest data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).
From October to December 2020, detached housing sales in Burnaby skyrocketed 28% compared to the same three months in 2019. Sales of attached homes, such as townhouses, jumped 27% during the same period.
As for prices, December prices in Burnaby East jumped 14.3% compared with December 2019, while Burnaby North went up 10.6% and Burnaby South 5.7%.
So Burnaby real estate is definitely not dead, as some predicted would happen with a pandemic.
Residential sales surged 53.4% year over year last month to a hit a new all-time record in the region, according to the REBGV.
A total of 3,093 units were sold in December 2020, up from the 2,016 sales recorded the same month a year earlier.
It also marks a 0.9% increase from November 2020.
The latest gains were 57.7% above the 10-year December sales average.
For the year, the region tallied a total of 30,944 home sales. That’s up 22.1% from the 25,351 sales recorded in 2019 and represents a 25.7% increase compared with the 24,618 sales in 2018.
However, the 2020 sales are still 2.8% below the 10-year sales average.
This decline comes after different levels of government began introducing measures to cool down white-hot markets in Vancouver and Toronto.
But the pandemic has brought on measures from the Bank of Canada to keep the economy chugging, including record-low interest rates.
The benchmark price for all residential properties, including condos and detached homes, across Metro Vancouver reached $1,047,400 by the end of 2020.
That’s up 5.4% from a year earlier.
- With files from Tyler Orton, Business in Vancouver
