Vancouver duplex listings around C$1.35m: what explains 81 days on market?

C

cairn.common

First-time buyer
Established
Eighty-one days is the figure making me question this Vancouver sample. Most entries are duplexes between C$1,080,000 and C$1,620,000, with C$1,350,000 as the central price, but they may not be comparable enough for that average exposure time to mean much.

Insurance looked like a plausible explanation for why some sold quickly while others lingered. I am less convinced now, because two apparently similar properties could differ more in condition, exact location, financing appeal or the seller’s urgency than in insurance.

Would completed sales support any one of those explanations? I also need to trace properties through withdrawals and relistings, since an 81-day current entry could hide a much longer marketing history.
 
I wouldn’t put insurance first without comparing the actual listings. At this price, two duplexes can look similar in a search while differing materially in condition, layout and exact location. Financing can also expose the gap between an asking price and what a buyer can support.

Start with completed sales, not active asking prices, and compare the first list price, final list price and time of the reduction.
 
One missing detail: does your 81-day figure follow the property through withdrawals and relistings, or only the current listing entry? If it resets after a relist, the quick-versus-stale split may be partly artificial. I’d also separate new-listing volume from genuinely new stock; otherwise the same homes can make supply appear more active than it is.
 
I wouldn’t dismiss the insurance theory quite that quickly. It may not explain the whole market, but a property-specific concern could delay a deal after buyers have already shown interest. The useful distinction is whether stale listings are failing to attract offers at all or repeatedly reaching a late stage and returning. Public listing history alone may not reveal that, so avoid treating every long marketing period as simple overpricing.
 
Neighbourhood grouping may be doing more damage to the sample than it seems. A broad Vancouver label is useful for searching but weak for comparing duplexes; crossing a neighbourhood boundary can change the buyer pool even when the map distance is small.

I’d make smaller groups, then tag condition as move-in ready, cosmetic work or substantial work. Only after that would I compare price cuts and days visible.
 
A practical worksheet could settle most of this: address, original and current ask, listing and withdrawal dates, relistings, completed sale price where available, condition, micro-area and any disclosed issue relevant to financing or insurance. Then mark whether the first cut came early or only after a long wait.

If the 81-day properties remain slower within those tighter groups, that is meaningful. If not, the headline figure is mostly describing the composition of the sample rather than Vancouver demand.
 
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