The number of residences sold across the country last July was 29.3% lower than in July 2021, according to the latest data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) released Monday.
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On a monthly basis, residential sales between June and July fell 5.3%. “While this is the fifth consecutive month-over-month decline in real estate activity, it is also the weakest of the five,” ACI noted in its report.
Sales were notably down in the Greater Toronto Area, Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley, Calgary and Edmonton.
“The trend of the last few months continues: sales are slowing and prices are falling in some relatively more expensive markets in the country, as well as in areas where prices have increased the most over the past two years,” said Jill Oudil, president of the ICA, in a press release on Monday.
“Having said that, the demand that was so strong a few months ago hasn’t faded, but some buyers will probably wait to see what happens with borrowing costs and prices. When they re-enter the market, they will have a little more choice, but not as much as one might have thought,” he added.
CREA data shows that the number of properties listed has also fallen, by 5.3%, month-on-month, suggesting that some selling owners have also decided to wait, even though the supply of properties for sale is at a historically low level.
“New registrations have declined […]so that the ratio of sales to new listings remained at 51.7% – its lowest level since January 2015,” analyzed Marc Desormeaux, senior economist at Desjardins.
He estimates that the national ratio of sales to new listings continues to push the Canadian market closer to buyer-friendly territory and points to further price declines over the next six months.
Regionally, most of the declines in recent months have been recorded in Ontario, and to a lesser extent in British Columbia. In the Prairies, prices remain more or less stable, while they are just starting to fall in Quebec. On the east coast, prices continue to rise generally, but much more slowly.
The actual average price of properties sold in the country in July 2022 was $629,971, representing a decrease of 5% compared to the same month last year.
CREA points out that the national average price is heavily influenced by sales in Greater Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, two of the busiest and most expensive markets in Canada. Indeed, if we exclude these two markets from the calculation, the national average price drops by approximately $104,000.
Economist Marc Desormeaux estimates that average home sales prices in Canada will fall nearly 25% from their peak in early 2022 by the end of next year. “It will take time for this slowdown to spread to the broader Canadian economy, and as a result, we remain of the view that the central bank will need to cut interest rates at the end of 2023,” he said. he declared.