"It's a market that will have a lot of units for sale and more coming on stream."

Over the past two months we have been talking about the exploding number of real estate listings in Vancouver, listings which have grown by more than 50% since the first business day of 2012.

On his Facebook page today, local real estate icon Ozzie Jurock made a post which contained the following observation about the real estate market in greater Vancouver:

"(It's) a market that will have a lot of units for sale and more coming on stream."

Jurock used this teaser to let followers know about his OpEd piece in yesterday's Vancouver Sun, a piece that had several nuggets of interesting info and expanded on his observations about increasing inventory:

As of Feb. 29, 2012, there were 6,000-plus condos for sale through the Vancouver Real Estate Board - up 15% compared to the previous year.

At the same time, sales of used condos were down by 18%.

Add to this the fact that - according to MPC Intelligence - there are some 8,000 pre-sale condos being launched in the first six months of this year.

Now Ozzie's piece was all about how to buy a condo in such a market, but anybody looking to sell in the environment must have felt their blood run cold when they read this.

Because you saw that correctly - a tsunami of pre-sale condos is about to descend upon the real market, a wave of product which will more than DOUBLE the current available condo inventory.

Perhaps this explains some realtor advice given to some friends recently.

Looking to sell their Coquitlam condo (which they bought brand new 5 years ago), their realtor commented on the current competitive marketplace.

His advice?

Completely renovate the condo - new floors, new paint, new appliances, etc - because this was the only way to successfully market the unit against new stock coming on the market.

At first I wasn't sure why he was adamant they take these steps. I know listings were going up, but I had no idea the amount of available condo inventory was about to more than double.

Now it all makes sense - the local real estate sales game is about to become a highly competitive sport.

And - I suspect - a very ruthless one at that.

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