It is bizarre; the higher house prices climb in the Vancouver area, the more people are rushing to buy.

How else to interpret some dramatic new numbers from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

According to the board, 2,641 housing purchases were recorded in the region in March 2014. Last month, the number shot to 4,060 — a 54 per cent increase in sales.

“Absolutely crazy, unprecedented,” is the way Rosalee McRae, a Vancouver Realtor who has been selling for 40 years, describes it.

McRae, who had $10 million in sales last month, added: “It’s especially nutty on Vancouver’s east side.”

Vancouver, along with Toronto, is bucking a national trend. Prices and sales are moderating in most markets.

It’s not as though buying conditions in this city got any easier between March 2014 and March 2015. Exactly the opposite happened.

A lot more detached houses rocketed past the $1 million mark, with east Vancouver, Richmond, North Vancouver and Burnaby all joining the west side and West Vancouver in the sky-high price club, with the average detached house at more than a million. Even prices for townhouses and condos maintained an upward trajectory.

This despite warnings in the past year from the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of Canada about an overheated housing market in Canada, where Vancouver holds the trophy for most expensive real estate.

Yet, people don’t seem to care. They want in on whatever is going on here, to start building equity in what they perceive as a growth market.

McRae pointed to factors behind the real estate rush.

• Interest rates are the lowest anyone can remember.

• Asian buyers of west side property — interested in land more than houses — are capitalizing on ‘cheaper’ prices due to a low Canadian dollar.

• A growing posse of baby boom retirees is downsizing, cashing out, and buying smaller west side properties.

• This group also is giving their children money to help them buy housing on Vancouver’s newly prized east side.

“We’re seeing strong competition among homebuyers today,” says real estate board president Darcy McLeod, in a news release titled “Home buyers out in force in March.”

“This is leading to multiple offer situations,” better known as bidding wars, possibly the most harrowing experience any buyer can experience.

The unprecedented buying spree is also putting “upward pressure on home prices” — the last thing needed in this market, where west side teardowns get snatched up for $1.7 million.

And where, in March, an ordinary looking 2,100-square-foot home on East 26th Avenue fetched $576,000 more than the $1.6 million asking price.

You might think properties are selling like hotcakes because of a dearth of listings. Not really; March listings were 4.7 per cent more numerous than the region’s 10-year new listing average, though 14.5 per cent lower than a year earlier.

Or, perhaps the rush is due to a proliferation of bargains out there? Nope, the typical price for all Lower Mainland residential property types is $660,700 — up 7.2 per cent over March 2014. The benchmark price for a detached home in Metro is $1,052,800, up 11.2 per cent in the past year.

Sales of attached properties — typically priced at $484,900, up 4.9 per cent over last year — have increased by, wait for it, 72.3 per cent. Even condo sales are up 47 per cent.

The continuing price escalation suggests many buyers, to maximize high land value, will continue demolishing to build new, larger houses on their properties.

On my Kitsilano block, three properties are under construction within half a block on either side.

The astonishing sales growth, even as prices keep soaring, strongly suggests folks are adapting, finding ways to buy Vancouver real estate, regardless of the obstacles.

Whether using equity, teaming up with friends, capitalizing on inheritances, borrowing from parents or mortgaging themselves to the hilt, they are showing genuinely remarkable survival skills.

byaffe@vancouversun.com