VANCOUVER, B.C. – February 3, 2009 – The first month of 2009 saw a continued reduction in the number of homes listed for sale in Greater Vancouver, while sales volumes in January were the lowest for that month since the early 1980s.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that sales of detached, attached and apartment properties declined 58.1 per cent in January 2009 to 762 from the 1,819 sales recorded in January 2008.

New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties declined 20.9 per cent to 3,700 in January 2009 compared to January 2008, when 4,675 new units were listed. Total active listings in Greater Vancouver currently sit at 13,966, down nearly 6,000 listings from October 2008.

Overall residential benchmark prices, as calculated by the MLSLink Housing Price Index®, declined 10.9 per cent to $489,007 between Januarys 2008 and 2009.

“Home sales and consumer confi dence are at a low point at the moment, but the long-term strength and security of our housing market are beyond the reach of the economic clouds of today,” Dave Watt, REBGV president said.

“Today’s short-term conditions are creating long-term opportunities. Buying opportunities have not been this strong in a decade, with low interest rates, broad selection and more affordable prices,” Watt said.

Sales of detached properties declined 54.4 per cent to 292 from the 641 detached sales recorded during the same period in 2008. The benchmark price for detached properties declined 11.2 per cent to $659,638 in January 2009 compared to $742,490 January 2008.

Sales of apartment properties in January 2009 declined 58 per cent to 361, compared to 860 sales in January 2008. The benchmark price of an apartment property declined 11.6 per cent to $334,602 compared to $378,336 in January 2008.

Attached property sales in January 2009 were down 65.7 per cent to 109, compared with the 318 sales in January 2008. The benchmark price of an attached unit declined 8.1 per cent to $425,309 compared to $462,627 in January 2008.

~ Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver

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Originally published at An unbiased street view with curb appeal. You can comment here or there.

This is a bad week for Virus / Worms /rogues etc. If you or any of your family use Facebook or MSN Messenger please read the following, it might save you from some grief and save some money.

MSNWorm.FU is a worm that spreads through MSN Messenger. To do so, it opens conversations with the infected user’s contacts and offers them a file as if it were a photo for the contact to accept and consequently become infected. The file is sent together with sentences such as:

“me puedes marcar en esta foto de facebook?” (can you tag me in this facebook photo) “me cerraron mi cuenta por subir esta foto. si esta muy mal?” (they closed my account for loading this photo. Is it that bad?) “viste esta super fiesta de año nuevo?” (check out the New Year party) “toma, esta perfecta esta foto como wallpaper” (here, this photo is perfect as wallpaper)

The file is usually compressed in a .zip file to avoid being detected by the Messenger.

DirDel.A is a worm that reaches computers with a folder icon, to fool users into running it. When run, it does not display any message or open any folder. This malware replaces folders in different directories with a copy of itself. For example, if there is a folder called Example, it creates a copy of itself in the same directory called Example.exe and deletes all the original folders and their content.

This worm spreads by copying itself to all the system drives and shared folders.

P2PShared.AB reaches computers disguised as an email file, with names related to trademarks, such as Ikea.exe. To spread, it copies itself onto the shared files of P2P programs, with names of programs, disks, and so on. For example:

Youtube Music Downloader 1.0.exe

Absolute Video Converter 6.2.exe

FOOTBALL MANAGER 2009.exe

Password Cracker.exe

This worm also spreads via email by sending spam emails with subjects such as You´ve received a Hallmark E-Card, and an attached file called postcard.zip which contains malware. See image here

In addition, this week PandaLabs has informed about a new phishing attack used by Facebook as bait. French users received a message inviting them to view specific content in Facebook. When they did, they were redirected to a fake Facebook page, similar to the original. Any details they entered were sent to cyber-crooks.

More information here:
http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/archive/Facebook-Phishing-Site-Targets-French-Users.aspx

You can thank my friend David Anderson at Technically Yours for this information.

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Originally published at An unbiased street view with curb appeal. You can comment here or there.