Home prices fall again as sellers start to back away

financialpost.com:

National home prices declined again in November amid signs that sellers are giving up on the housing market after rushing to list properties earlier in the fall.

According to data released by the Canadian Real Estate Association on Dec. 14, the average home price in November fell 0.4 per cent to $644,107 on a month-over-month basis.

The MLS Home Price Index (HPI), meanwhile, declined 1.1 per cent from October, but remained up 0.6 per cent from a year ago.

Sales were also down in November, but the 0.9 per cent decline over October was the lowest monthly decline since July.

The number of newly listed properties also fell, off 1.8 per cent.

“While it was clear from about August that a lot of buyers were probably going to head back to the sidelines until at least next spring, a surprising number of sellers nonetheless chose to try their luck this fall,” CREA’s senior economist Shaun Cathcart said in the report. “Not getting offers they were willing to accept, it’s looking like many of them are also now resigned to hunker down until next year. It’s probably a good move given that recent expectations around interest rate cuts suggest it might be a somewhat more active spring market than we thought.”

Prices in Ontario have been the first to fall. Winnipeg, Halifax and the Fraser Valley have also seen declines, while Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador are still experiencing rising prices.

Larry Cerqua, chair of CREA, said he doesn’t expect any attention-grabbing developments in the resale housing market over the next few months. He said this was a positive, indicating that the market is gradually stabilizing in a balanced state.