It looks like Abbotsford might be positioned to have a pretty slow summer for real estate, as June continued the recent trend of slipping prices and stale home sales.
According to the most recent report from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB), it was detached homes that suffered most of the biggest changes in the Abbotsford market.
June had 58 detached home sales, which was a massive drop of 25.6 per cent from May and 21.6 per cent fewer than June 2024.
In comparison, townhouse sales dropped by 26.2 per cent from May and 13.5 per cent year-over-year, while apartment sales remained the same as in June 2024 and actually rose by 11.8 per cent from May.
Something that decreased across the board was the number of new listings in June compared to the May numbers, with detached homes falling by 17 per cent, townhouses by 7 per cent, and apartments by 6.8 per cent.
Despite this slowdown of new properties being put on the market, the number of active listings still continued to climb in most categories, with only apartment listings experiencing a slight decrease of 0.3 per cent from May.
When compared to the number of active listings in June 2024, the growth in current Abbotsford listings is quite astonishing, especially among townhouses, which have almost 70 per cent more listings on the market than last year.
This rise of active listings and slowdown of sales is a combination that is impacting all of the Fraser Valley, with the average time to sell a condo in the region being 39 days in June. Detached homes took an average of 35 days to sell, while townhouses had the quickest sales time of 30 days.
FVREB CEO Baldev Gill suggested that some government intervention might be necessary to help bring the real estate market out of this gully.
"There’s no question the economy continues to grapple with unpredictability surrounding trade and tariffs, and the real estate market, like all sectors, is adapting to an uncertain future," Gill said.
"Perhaps this presents an opportunity for government to revisit policy decisions of the past, which may have served their purposes under different market conditions, in support of new economic realities."
These longer sales times are also largely reflected in the benchmark prices for all three property types, with Abbotsford's detached homes falling to a price of $1,202,700, marking a 1 per cent decline from May and a 3 per cent drop from 2024.
However, townhouses, which had the shortest average number of days to sell, experienced a smaller drop in price. In June, the townhouse benchmark price was $660,600 – a 0.8 per cent decline from May.
Apartment prices were the anomaly, rising by 1.5 per cent to $435,000 despite having the longest average sales time. Even with this slight increase from May, the benchmark price still sits 1.2 per cent lower than June 2024, matching the long-term trend of dropping prices across all three property types.
This combination of dropping prices and more listings presents an advantageous position for potential buyers, explained FVREB chair Tore Jacobsen.
"For buyers who can tolerate the current economic uncertainty, this market offers some very real opportunities," Jacobsen said. "With more homes to choose from and softening prices, it’s a uniquely favourable time to make a move in the Fraser Valley, particularly for first-time buyers."
