Real Estate Survey
The Vancouver Island Real Estate Board came out with a very interesting report came out recently. It is a survey of all the 2010 home buyers on Vancouver Island north of Victoria who used the MLS service. They got a 25% return rate on all the questionnaires sent out. That’s very high. The highest rate of return was Parksville/Qualicum with 30%. Alberni West Coast came in second lowest with 19%.
And it tells us that an awful lot of people are buying homes to retire into and most of them are from off-island. Specifically, 45% were from off-island. It also tells us that most of them are buying along the east side of Vancouver Island.
Another very interesting statistic is that half of the buyers lived in the community less than a year before they bought. And the next highest segment had lived in the area over 20 years. In the Parksville area, over 60% had lived less than a year and 55% were buying retirement homes. Contrast that with the Alberni area, and you see that 42% had lived less than a year here, and that a mere 25% bought for retirement.
Another thing I noticed was that the port Alberni area had the one of the smaller number of home sales of all the regions. It may be that there are fewer residents here than in other areas. But I think proportionally it was fewer.
One thing that I’ve said for quite a number of years to anyone who will listen is that more and more the economy of Vancouver Island is running on pensions. This data shows this quite dramatically. It seems that despite having a very good hospital in Port Alberni, despite having a very good core of government services, an active senior’s Sunshine club and significantly cheaper property values, we are missing this boat. We have to ask ourselves why. And we need to do something about it.
Sandy McRuer