Nobody was carrying around a pig with a head on a stick, but the crowd that lined up throughout the night to purchase condos at Yaletown's The Mark was definitely showing signs of regressing.

It's been a couple of years since Vancouver's real estate market drove people to desperate measures. But last weekend, with 214 presale condos to go on sale in the luxury building in the prime location, Vancouver turned into crazy town all over again. Within hours, 163 of those condos at Pacific and Seymour were sold. more than two dozen of them to people who had slept overnight in a line-up. By Saturday morning, there were 150 people waiting in line to make their bid on a development that won't be ready until 2013.

"This is not cheap, to be quite honest. It's not like we were selling condos for $249,000 - 'come on down, you can't believe the prices,'" says Onni marketer Cam Good. "These condos are $400,000 to $950,000. It's just surprising that people would sleep overnight for that kind of luxury."

Perhaps it was the all night wait. Perhaps it was the freezing cold, driving rain. Perhaps it was the other 20 to 25 miserable people in line. But by 7 a.m., Mr. Good was a dial tone away from calling 911. It wasn't the young Japanese girl who came with in her snowboard outfit and sleeping bag, looking to purchase a one-bedroom, who caused the fuss. It was the guy who came with the sole purpose of selling his primo place in line to the desperate buyers. When the man, who was third in line, left the line-up to take a break and return, the rest of the line-up turned angry and refused to let him back in.

"It was like Lord of the Flies," says Mr. Good. "In the morning when I arrived there early, I found this big confrontation going on...It was a crowd of people who had developed their own society and rules. They created the rule that you are allowed to take a break from the line-up, but for 30 minutes max. This guy had left for too long and was extricated. Part of the reason was he wasn't a real buyer. He was a scalper almost."

Mr. Good says he hasn't seen a line-up for condo sales since 2007. Motivated by last weekend's events, he has put a hold on any more sales at The Mark until 2010. Last weekend's sale was for only the first 30 floors of the building. The developer is approved for 35, and currently awaiting approval from the city to increase that to 41 storeys. If approved, those additional units, as well as the remaining unsold ones from last weekend, will go back on the market after the Olympics. Mr. Good says he's now grateful that they had to wait for city approval because it delayed further sales. Prices, he says, can only go up.

"The Olympic release has gotten a lot bigger, because we have frankly sold too much too fast," he says. "I believe the market is going up. We sold enough. We will see expressions of interest through, but only till December 20, then everything is off the market."

Two other Onni projects have also sold well in September and October. At Chinatown's V6A, 76 homes out of 124 have sold, and at The Social at 7th and Main, 92 out of 128 units have sold. Mr. Good says he's averaging 25 sales a week on those projects.

It's a far cry from the state of the market in the first quarter of the year. From January to March, Mr. Good was selling off units in six Onni properties for 25 to 40 per cent less than asking, because the presale buyers had defaulted. In many cases, those buyers could no longer qualify for a mortgage on a condo that had greatly dropped in value.

Because financing is not easy to obtain, Adera president Norm Couttie says only major developers are in the market right now. Last week he sold every unit of Pacific, the 91-unit development at UBC that was put on hold for a year due to the downturn. He didn't have to market the project because so many buyers knew about it by word of mouth. They came prepared to buy, and on opening day he sold 45 units.

"I had writer's cramp," he says, laughing.

In January, his marketing team will launch the presales for Spirit, the nearby 62-unit development that will be ready for occupancy in 2011.

"I think it's the low interest rates," says Mr. Couttie. "I think people do believe things are going to get better. The HST is offset by the positive that is the Olympics. I think people feel that buying real estate in Vancouver is still a wise long-term decision."