Despite media reports of million-dollar house prices, the real price for a detached house in most of Metro Vancouver is less than $600,000 and the price of a condominium the average buyer is looking for is less than $315,000, according to a detailed study of selling prices by Vancouver-based Urban Futures. 

Even the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver notes that one in five of all homes sold through the multiple listing service in May was priced at $350,000 or less.  

The reason prices appear stratospheric is because extremely high prices on the West Side of Vancouver, West Vancouver and Richmond, where median house prices are in excess of $1 million, distort the statistics reported in most media. On the West Side, the median price in May was above $2 million.

The just-released study from Urban Futures used Landcor Data figures to show that sales of high end homes skew the market statistics.
The Urban Futures report breaks down the sales data into five quintiles representing equal sales in price brackets from the highest to lowest. Considering the top quintile (or top 20 percent of sales by value), which ranged up to $17.5 million, the average price was a lofty $1.69 million, twice the average price for all sales. But in the remaining 80 per cent of the market, the average price was $591,000, or 27 per cent below the overall average price.
Further, in 2010 there were 21,451 condo/apartment sales in the Metro region, down 24 per cent from 2009. Yet average sales prices for all condo/apartment units increased by 12 per cent to $429,764. This increase was in large part influenced by sales at the top end of the market, where the most expensive condo sold for $17.5 million, Urban Futures said.

Prices in the uppermost quintile rose by more than six times the rate of those in the bottom 80 percent of the market (a 26% increase versus 4 per cent). This resulted in a 2010 average sales price for the top quintile of $904,338, while the average sales price for the remaining 80% was only $311,069. (These are 2010 prices but Urban Futures notes the same ratio held true in the first quarter of 2011)  According to Urban Futures, 80 per cent of home buyers can still find relatively affordable homes, with detached houses around $600,000 and condos for half that price.