The decline of the Lower Mainland's real estate market continued in October with the fall in prices erasing any equity gains homeowners saw in the first part of 2008, the region's real estate boards reported Monday.
Battered consumer confidence, despite B.C.'s better-than-average economic performance, kept buyers on the sidelines with the Greater Vancouver region recording less than half the number of Multiple-Listing-Service sales and the Fraser Valley experiencing an almost 50-per-cent decline from October 2007 sales levels.
"It's not like the market has disappeared and people aren't buying," Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate at the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C., said in an interview.
