Consumer confidence Recovering

Canadian consumer confidence has revived since December to highest level since August, according to a Harris-Decima poll. While the US was officially in recession at that point, it wasn’t until September that the current economic turmoil emerged to the front pages of our newspapers with required bailouts an massive corporate failures.

While supply and demand are the key factors in prices and activity in the Real Estate Market, consumer confidence is a key component of demand. Nobody wants to purchase an asset that will immediately drop in value. Vancouver Real Estate Prices have been falling through much of 2008, and especially in the second half of the year.

With the chance of values we have experienced in the Vancouver Real Estate market, especially in Downtown condominium project; many people who have purchased Pre-Sales are now completing their purchases at significantly higher prices than the property would be worth if they were negotiate a deal today. As long as you don’t live in the property, you are purchasing an investment. Some investments go up and some go down. I think we are all pretty familiar with investments that go down these days. If you turned around and sold a property today, you would probably do so at a loss.