Photo: Adam Jones/Flickr

For many first-time homebuyers, sky-high Vancouver home prices aren’t enough to stop them from entering the market, suggests a poll from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).

In fact, 32 per cent of all homebuyers in Greater Vancouver during the year ending in April were purchasing residential real estate for the very first time, according to REBGV.

Source: REBGV

Meantime, Vancouverites looking to purchase a dwelling similar to their current one comprised almost 19 per cent of homebuyers over the past year.

REBGV, which consists of more than 13,500 realtors in the region, surveyed its members who represented homebuyers from April 2016 to April 2017 to determine purchaser demographics.

The poll suggests families with children represented 35.5 per cent of homebuyers from April 2016 to the same month this year. Young childless couples followed at 16 per cent, while single men accounted for a 13.3 per cent share of buyers over that period.

Source: REBGV

The majority of buyers are from Greater Vancouver. Some 38 per cent of recent homebuyers surveyed were purchasing a home in the same community they previously lived in, while 36 per cent were from outside of the region and 14 per cent were investors.

Buyers continued to show strong interest in viewing properties before buying. About 85 per cent attended open houses, compared to 82 per cent a year earlier.

And most homebuyers (60 per cent) in Greater Vancouver, where the benchmark price of a home is $941,100, put forward a downpayment of at least 25 per cent.

The amount of multiple offers on properties hasn’t changed significantly over the past year either, with about 85 per cent of realtors seeing more than one offer on a property this April versus 83 percent in April 2016.