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Concierge Auctions opens in “correcting” Vancouver market
The auction house's new Canadian office will market to local and foreign buyers
It’s fitting that a company born amid the 2008 housing market crash sees opportunity in Vancouver as its red-hot housing market falters.
Florida-based Concierge Auctions is opening up an office in Vancouver, reported the Globe & Mail. According to the local real estate board, home sales in November dropped 18.2 percent compared to October, and plummeted 42.5 percent compared to the previous year.
“When you have a correcting market like you have in Vancouver right now, people don’t know what their homes are worth,” said Concierge’s Aurelia Isidoro to the publication. “The competition of the auction will bring the true value of the home, and at the end of the day in correcting markets, we set the bar.”
Years of soaring housing prices in the city — driven by mainly Chinese foreign buyers — prompted local lawmakers to introduce new taxes on foreign homeowners. In September, Vancouver was declared the most unaffordable housing market in North America.
Officials have also launched probes to look at money laundering in the city’s housing market, tax evasion and the flow of dirty money into the Canadian province more broadly. [Globe & Mail] — Erin Hudson