Want to know how hot the Burnaby real estate market is?
Just take a quick stroll through listings for houses in the community. That’s where you’ll find all sorts of old, crumbling homes for sale for insane prices.
Like, for example, a 97-year-old house in the 5000 block of Canada Way that is on sale for a staggering $4.6 million.
Just look at the photo. The place looks haunted. In no way would I go anywhere near that house at night because I would be afraid of a ghost jumping out at me.
The place is only 2,500 square feet in size, but it is on half an acre. That’s probably where the huge pricetag is coming from. But $4.6 million for a teardown? In Burnaby? That still seems really unrealistic even for a piece of land that size. Sure, you might be able to subdivide it and build two houses, but even with that the prices feel outrageous.
That might be why the place has been on the market for 500 days.
House sales have seen a small slowdown since the start of 2022, according to the latest stats from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, but some properties in Burnaby are still selling for way over the asking price.
Take, for example, a house on Spruce Street near Burnaby Hospital. It just sold for a whopping $2,237,000 or 19% over the original asking price. Not bad for a house that is barely over 2,000 square feet and is 68 years old that includes a moldy-looking lawn on the 7,200-square-foot lot.
As for townhouses, a 28-year-old home measuring 2,600 square feet on Mulberry Place (scroll through the photos above for a pic of the living room) just sold for $1,580,000, which is 21% over the original asking price.
The REBGV numbers show that the average price for a single-detached house jumped nearly 20% in the area of Burnaby South, which is the city’s priciest area to buy a house. The average detached house price across the entire city went from $1,574,000 to a whopping $2,062,000 in just one year.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
