Amidst the recent news last week that Vancouver City Council is planning to approve an 8.2% property tax hike in Vancouver, it seems that the extraordinary cost of living in Canada’s West Coast big city is pushing some mortgage holders to the breaking point. Vancouver and Toronto have always been pricey places for both real estate and everything day to day, but it’s a troubling trend to see these increasing numbers of insolvency. Along with the never-ending suggestion that it’s the beginning of the ‘bubble burst’ that so many are hoping for.
As it relates to the real estate industry, there’s usually a ‘chill’ seen overall in response to conditions where prospective home buyers see that so many of their predecessors hasn’t been able to manage their mortgaging of the home. Clearly we know that many homebuyers in both cities got in over their heads in the mad rush to buy property around 2010 or so, and it may be that many of these same individuals are now the ones defaulting. So while the chill may occur, there’s enough demand for real estate in Vancouver that properties that come onto the market will still be snapped up at asking price or higher.
Here at Real Estate Leads, our online real estate lead generation service is an excellent resource to improve client lead generation for realtors. In particular if you’re new to the business, it’s a great way to get a leg up on your competitors and be put more directly in touch with potential home sellers or buyers who will want the assistance of a real estate professional. Once you establish yourself, lead generation in real estate will become more natural for you, but at this time anything you can do to have audiences with these people is going to be huge.
This current dynamic in the Vancouver housing market does create both advantages and disadvantages for realtors, but again, in general, this particular unfortunate reality should be something anyone in the real estate business and beyond might want to take note of.
Record Number for Q3 of Year to Date
The office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada (OSB) filings is relating that more people than ever before are becoming insolvent, and the numbers for the Q3 of 2019 are a record. Greater Vancouver has experienced growth for insolvencies over the past year, but this new quarter result shows it’s a trend that’s picking up momentum.
Insolvencies Vs. Bankruptcies
Insolvencies can be one of two varieties – consumer proposals and bankruptcy. Both need a licensed insolvency trustee (LIT) to file for the client. Consumer proposals allow borrowers to pay a % of the debt owed and in exchange the lender has the balance owing discharged. In bankruptcy, the borrower assigns the majority of their assets to an LIT. The appeal of this is that some of your unsecured debt is discharged. All bankruptcies are insolvencies, but not all insolvencies are bankruptcies. The most important part of either is that both mean lender losses, and a very undesirable stain on the borrower’s credit.
Greater Vancouver Insolvencies Rise Over 25% In Q3
Greater Vancouver insolvencies are almost shooting up over the latest quarter. There were 1,393 insolvency filings made in Q3 2019, a jump of 25.27% from the same quarter last year. Oppositely, BC saw a total of 2,926 filings in Q3 2019, a 21.87% jump compared to the same quarter in 2018. The truth of it is Greater Vancouver’s insolvency growth is hogging more of the debt failure.
If one looks at the number of insolvency filings made in the 12 months before Q3 end 2019 between Greater Vancouver and British Columbia, you’ll see that Vancouver is making really gains on taking the entirety of insolvencies in BC as a whole.
Shockingly, they’re up 17% over just the past year!
Greater Vancouver insolvencies have been rising over the past year, but never this quickly. 5,021 insolvency filings over the past 12-months ending in Q3 2019 is a majorly large number, up 9.06% compared to this same time in 2018. To put this in contrast, BC has seen 10,935 filings in the same window, and that is a 9.53% increase compared to Q3 end 2018.
While Vancouver-area insolvencies may have been growing a little slower than the general BC rate over many years now, we’re now seeing it really start to pick up steam in contrast to the year in its entirety.
Greater Vancouver insolvencies are rising, but it’s true they are all across the country too. The growth in the number of filings has been slower than it generally has been for BC. This is very likely to change soon. This recent spike in insolvencies in Greater Vancouver is both occurring much faster than before and it’s leaving the provincial growth rate in the dust if this continues.
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