Consumer Confidence Recovering
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.
Whether or not prices have stabilized, consumers are feeling good enough about the market that they are again participating. Since mid February, there has been a flurry of activity in the $250,000-$400,000 condominium market. Some of this has been the blowout sales such as the Onni Group / Mac Marketing and H & H (Homer and Helmcken) projects. I think the spring will see increased activity as good opportunities are identified and people are less scarred to make a move.