By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

NNN’s top 10 of 2017: Prices and demand for Nanaimo real estate soars

Dec 28, 2017 | 3:55 PM

NANAIMO — Never-before-seen demand for real estate paced a feverish residential market in Nanaimo in 2017.

Average house prices rose, topping record levels of over $500,000 due in part to a lack of inventory in the Harbour City.

“As long as the demand remains more than the supply, the prices will keep going up,” Janice Stromar, Vancouver Island Real Estate board president and Nanaimo realtor, told NanaimoNewsNOW in April.

Stromar said multiple offers and bidding wars on homes became the new norm, after only happening occasionally in Nanaimo in the past.

While a lack of homes for sale drove up prices, developers and trades workers were busy trying to satisfy heavy demand.

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“We get phone calls every week with people looking for property and then it’s a case of do we have the manpower to do it,” Byron Gallant, a Nanaimo contractor, told us in May

“We are scheduling some portions of projects three or four months ahead of time, some builders I have been speaking to are scheduling projects into next year,” Gallant said.

Nanaimo land has indeed been a highly sought after commodity. Proponents with the Foothills housing development in Lantzville reported 60 of 71 single-family lots were sold in one day when sales opened last spring. While single-family homes dominated Nanaimo’s real-estate market, condominiums proved to a be a hot item as well. 50 of 61 units in a Chapel St. condo development in downtown Nanaimo sold in just three days in December.

While it’s unclear what impact stricter mortgage rules coming into effect in the new year will have, it seems Nanaimo’s real estate market will continue to boom.

This story came in at number 8 on our top 10 list of biggest stories we covered this year. NanaimoNewsNOW is counting down our top 10 local stories of 2017, with the top two stories named on New Year’s Eve. Be sure to check back and offer your thoughts on the biggest stories of 2017.

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