 Courtesy: Tourism Vancouver |
Before the Olympics, real estate executives in Vancouver downplayed the impact of the Games. Any boost to sales occurred years ago, when Vancouver was named a host city, conventional wisdom suggested.
Conventional wisdom may have been wrong.
Instead of grinding to halt during the crazed hoopla leading up to the Games, sales in the greater Vancouver area actually surged in February, jumping 67.1 percent from February of 2009 and 28.6 percent from January, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
Meanwhile, the association’s benchmark price for the region is up 19.7 percent from a year ago, to $581,911. The price is “2.4 per cent above the previous high point in the market in May 2008,” the association reports.
“We don’t know at this point what long-term impact the Olympics will have on our housing market, but we do know that activity remained steady through all of the excitement and distraction of the last few weeks,” REBGV president Scott Russell said in a statement.
The Olympics factor on real estate was a subject of debate before the games.
“Games Won't Boost House Prices in Vancouver,” one recent study announced.
“We look at housing markets before, during and after a city hosts the Olympic Games to see if there is any evidence of an Olympic bounce through an increase in house prices. We find none," concluded authors Tsur Somerville and Jake Wetzel of the Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, Sauder School of Business.
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