Victoria faces property shortages while more move in for lifestyle change
VICTORIA — It’s still the dead of winter in much of Canada, but in Victoria daffodils and crocuses are about to begin sprouting, marking the unofficial signal to start another real estate season for anxious home buyers and sellers.
The Victoria Real Estate Board says a repeat of last year’s record-smashing property sales that saw constant bidding wars on southern Vancouver Island is not in the forecast for 2017. But prices are expected to continue rising amid a market of too few available homes.
Expectations that foreign buyers would flock to Victoria to avoid the 15-per-cent Metro Vancouver home tax has not happened, instead purchasers are arriving from other areas of the country, outgoing Victoria real estate board chief Mike Nugent said Monday.
“There’s certainly no evidence so far of showing a big shift of foreign buyers to Victoria,” he said. “As soon as it was implemented everybody phoned and said, ‘what are the numbers like? You must be getting an avalanche.’”