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House prices hit all-time high in Lower Mainland (with interactive charts)

One-year real estate price gains of 6.5 per cent for Vancouver-area houses, 3.6 in Fraser Valley
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Movement of benchmark home prices in the Fraser Valley over the past 10 years.

Lower Mainland real estate prices have hit new all-time highs, at least for detached houses.

The benchmark price of single-family houses tracked by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver climbed to $980,500 in July, an increase of 6.5 per cent from a year ago.

Attached homes were up 3.4 per cent year-over-year to $472,400, while condos were up 2.2 per cent to $376,500.

Benchmark prices show the shifts of a typical property and exclude the most expensive ones that can skew average prices much higher.

The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB), which includes Surrey, White Rock and North Delta, reported a benchmark detached house price of $568,300 in July, up three per cent from a year earlier.

But townhouses in the Fraser Valley were up just 0.2 per cent to $298,500 and benchmark condo prices have fallen 3.6 per cent from July of 2013 to $194,700.

"Our market has fully recovered from last year's slump and has returned to what we typically see in the Fraser Valley, which is a steady, consistent market," said FVREB president Ray Werger.

He said upward pressure on prices has been seen in areas such as White Rock, South Surrey, North Delta and Langley.

He said condos are "a different story" – they dropped as much as 16 per cent in Abbotsford over one year – but now offer "tremendous opportunities for buyers."

Condo prices have also dropped 18.6 per cent in Squamish,14.7 per cent in Whistler, and 2.2 per cent in Maple Ridge.

The strongest one-year gains across the Lower Mainland have been for detached houses in Vancouver (up around 10 per cent), West Vancouver (up 9.3 per cent), as well as condos in east Burnaby, which are up 11.7 per cent.

The strongest gain in detached house prices in the Valley has been the 6.6 per cent one-year increase in White Rock.

Nowhere in the Lower Mainland have house prices beaten the one-year gain of the Canadian stock market to this point. The TSX composite was up 22.5 per cent over one year as of the beginning of August and 45 per cent over five years, a mark beaten by real estate in only two Vancouver-area markets.

See the interactive charts below to compare price changes by community over one to five years.