Richmond's October Real Estate Sales: Looking scary, very scary!

Back on September 3rd, 2011, we posted real estate sales totals for the month of August in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond.

They weren't pretty.

At the start of the year, Richmond was booming with HAM (Hot Asian Money) and property values were soaring. Homes were selling for as much as $300,000 above asking price and the City seemed consumed by real estate bidding wars.

But August marked a dramatic reversal from that bullish trend. Sales were so bad that August 2011 came in as the 3rd worst August for sales of detached homes in Richmond over the last 17 years (the worst being 2008, second worst 1998).

So how has Richmond fared since then?

Realtor Larry Yatkowsky has provided his Richmond Neighbourhood Snapshot for October and things are not looking good.

His 'snapshot' of Richmond extends over the periods of August 24, to September 24, 2011 and September 24, to October 24, 2011.

Yatkowsky advises that total number of detached homes sold in Aug/Sept numbered 112, a poor total in it's own right. There were a total of 1,109 detached homes listed in that period.

But in Sept/Oct, the total sales of detached homes plummeted to 54 out of a total of 1,045 homes listed.

Only 54 detached homes have sold in October!!!

Even more stunning is the sales of new Condo units in Richmond for October.  According to numbers posted by the contributor 'Inventory' on the Vancouver Condo Info blog, there have only been 2 new Condo's sold in Richmond in October.

Sales of new Condo’s are down -92% compared to 2010 as of Oct 25, 2011.  Here are 'Inventory's' numbers since 2004 for the month of October:

Richmond Condo sales for October

2004 = 62
2005 = 37
2006 = 15
2007 = 36
2008 = 44
2009 = 45
2010 = 28
2011 = 2 ***Oct 25, 2011

Last month HAM vacated the Vancouver west side as not one single new home sold in that bastion of Hot Asian Money.

Based on these October numbers it's clear HAM didn't flee to that secondary hotbed of Richmond. The actual month end numbers will be interesting to see.

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