The Vancouver real estate market is cooling down, and luxury properties are no exception.

A company that specializes in expensive homes has reported that sales of all types of homes priced over $4 million in the city fell 14 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2022.

The Sotheby’s International Realty Canada report covers detached, attached, and condo properties.

Based on the agency’s explanation, the decline has to do with two factors.

One is that buyers have become smarter, and two, there are limited choices in the market.

“While heated bidding wars remain endemic for all residential housing types under $3 million, prospective luxury buyers are now well armed with market data and intelligence,” the Sotheby’s report noted.

Also, buyers are “increasingly wary of property prices significantly inflated above current norms and weary of multiple offer scenarios”.

“As a result,” Sotheby’s reported, “despite strong consumer demand and limited inventory, luxury properties that have been over-ambitiously priced compared to neighbourhood comparables are less likely to draw multiple bids and are at increasing risk of languishing on the market.”

As for single-family homes, the market for this type of property priced over $4 million “moderated in the first quarter of 2022”.

Sotheby’s reported that sales for this class of Vancouver real estate decreased 13 percent year-over-year “as the city’s scant listings inventory left consumer demand unfulfilled”.

The picture in Vancouver is part of the national situation presented in the Sotheby’s report Wednesday (April 13).

Overall, there is a surge in the condo market in Canada as the company noted a “renewal of urban life” in a post-COVID-19 world.

“Across Canada's major metropolitan areas, we have seen extraordinary sales activity and consumer demand in the luxury condominium market this year, leaving no doubt that consumer and investor confidence in the downtown and urban market has been fully restored,” Sotheby’s president and CEO Don Kottick said.

In Vancouver, the company reported that the condo market “dominated the top-tier real estate market in the first quarter of 2022”.

Luxury condo sales over $4 million increased eight percent year-over-year in the city.

Overall, $1 million-plus condo sales rose 29 percent year-over-year to 559 units sold in the first quarter of 2022.

This number represents 38 percent of total residential real estate sales over $1 million in the city during this period.