Everyone knows that Metro Vancouver’s housing market generates a lot of money.

But sometimes, figures in the hundreds of millions or billions appear too abstract for a number because of their sheer enormity.

And so it’s instructive when Kevin Skipworth breaks it down into more digestible digits.

Skipworth is a partner, managing broker, and economist with the Vancouver-based Dexter Realty.

Let’s take Skipworth’s report about the May 2021 market, which took a look at transactions in markets served by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.

Skipworth wrote that realtors with the REBGV sold 4,346 in May. Agents under the FVREB generated 2,951 sales.

That’s a combined 7,297 sales in one month.

“May, therefore, set an astounding pace of 235 sales per day, every day, all month long,” Skipworth noted.

Skipworth then multiplied the daily sales of 235 by the composite price of $1.14 million of a home in the Lower Mainland.

This results in a huge number, which is $267,900,000.

When reduced to an hourly basis, the money generated by the real-estate market in May 2021 translates to “$11.1 million worth of transactions every hour”.

“Make no mistake it is a very active market still,” Skipworth wrote.

It’s just that “we’ve just fallen off the cataclysmic highs of March and April”.

“And that’s not a bad thing,” Skipworth noted.

May 2021 sales were fewer than those in March and April 2021, which are considered to be record peaks.

“Like the weather itself in May, the Greater Vancouver housing market was unseasonably hot but with subtle signals of cooling,” Skipworth stated.

The Dexter Realty executive noted that the month of May “marked the second consecutive month with sales declining in absolute numbers from the previous month”.

However, last month’s market grew 187 percent compared to May 2020.

Hence, “it is hard to say this market is slowing”.

“What could and would cool the summer market, however, is a real and sustained uptick in actual mortgage rates – and that is a possibility due to inflation fears,” Skipworth wrote.

In his June 4 report, Dexter Realty executive has some advice for homebuyers and sellers.

For home purchasers: lock-in a prequalified mortgage rate for 90 days right now.

For home sellers: accept the best offer, and don’t bank on multiple offers over asking price.