Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows home sellers actually have to try now as market slows

Just a few years ago, an overheated Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows real estate market was dominated by the term “multiple offer madness” – leaving home sellers laughing all the way to the bank.

That meant too many buyers were fighting over too few properties, with prices escalating to new heights and some sellers not even bothering to stage their homes because why spend the money when the market is scorching hot.

If you wanted a home inspection or some other type of subject before you would buy, a seller could tell you to forget it because there’s a long list of buyers willing to just complete the deal.

The message was: take it or leave it.

Oh how times have changed. The latest Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley real estate sales numbers are out and they show it is now a buyers’ market, with one real estate group head saying that sellers will actually have to try hard to get someone to pull the trigger on a sale.

“Home sellers are having to work harder than they did a year or two ago,” said Tore Jacobsen, chair of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. “In a market where buyers are cautious and have ample choice, successful sellers are going the extra mile to meet buyers where they’re at — staging their home, handling repairs up front, and most importantly, pricing their homes realistically for the current market conditions.”

The Greater Vancouver REALTORS July report says that sales for the month are nearly 14 per cent below the 10-year seasonal average.

In Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows combined for the first six months of 2025, detached home sales dropped to 465 from 630 in the first half of 2024, while townhouse sales from to 295 from 366 and apartments to 228 from 282. Sales for the period of May to July 2025 dropped 20 per cent for apartments from the same period in 2024, 18.9 per cent for townhouses and 20 per cent for detached houses.

“I think it’s really concerning the fragility of the system,” said Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. “What can we do to build a level of resilience? A lot of these projects are shifting to rentals. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think there needs to be guarantees that the units will remain rentals should the market go the other way.”

Many cities are fighting to approve projects to meet new provincial housing targets, but a lack of investment means some projects may never be completed.

“You may have all these approvals, but they may not coalesce into actual homes,” Yan said.

The GVR report does say that there are some signs of life in sales activity.

“The June data showed early signs of sales activity in the region turning a corner, and these latest figures for July are confirming this emerging trend,” said Andrew Lis, GVR’s director of economics and data analytics. “Although the Bank of Canada held the policy rate steady in July, this decision could help bolster sales activity by providing more certainty surrounding borrowing costs at a time where economic uncertainty lingers due to ongoing trade negotiations with the USA.”

Across all detached, attached and apartment property types, the sales-to-active listings ratio for July 2025 is 13.8 per cent. By property type, the ratio is 10.2 per cent for detached homes, 16.7 per cent for attached, and 15.9 per cent for apartments.

Analysis of the historical data suggests downward pressure on home prices occurs when the ratio dips below 12 per cent for a sustained period, while home prices often experience upward pressure when it surpasses 20 per cent over several months.

“With the rate of homes coming to market holding steady in July, the inventory of homes available for sale on the MLS has stabilized at around 17,000. This level of inventory provides buyers plenty of selection to choose from,” Lis said. “Although sales activity is now recovering, this healthy level of inventory is sufficient to keep home prices trending sideways over the short term as supply and demand remain relatively balanced. However, if the recovery in sales activity accelerates, these favorable conditions for home buyers may begin slowly slipping away, as inventory levels decline, and home sellers gain more bargaining power.”