There were fewer commissions last year for residential real-estate agents in much of Metro Vancouver.

That's because the number of home sales fell by 5.6 percent, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Its territory includes all of the Lower Mainland except for North Delta, White Rock, Surrey, and Langley.

The 39,943 sales of detached, attached, and apartment properties were still 20.6 percent above the figure in 2014, but well below the 42,326 sales made in 2015.

Listings rose 0.6 percent in 2016 over the previous year, reaching 57,249.

"The supply of homes for sale couldn't keep up with home buyer demand for much of 2016," REBGV president Dan Morrison said in a news release. "This allowed home sellers to raise their asking price. It wasn’t until the last half of the year that prices began to show modest declines."

December sales fell sharply, dropping 39.4 percent below the figure recorded in the same month in 2015.

There were 1,714 transactions last month, which was 8.1 percent below the 10-year average for December.

December apartment sales were off 25.3 percent from December 2015. The benchmark price for these properties, $510,300, was up 17.3 percent from the previous year.

Sales of detached homes in December were down a whopping 52.4 percent from the same month of 2015. The benchmark price, $1.48 million, was 18.6 percent above the benchmark price from December 2015.