Ontario sees bulk of home price drops. These markets are also seeing declines
Canada’s housing market cooled further in November as sellers joined buyers on the sidelines, hoping for activity to heat back up in the spring, according to the national real estate association.
Some market watchers are meanwhile calling for a return to pandemic-era highs for home prices on the back of expected interest rate cuts in the new year, though not all provinces are forecast to see such a rapid recovery.
Sales activity in November slowed nearly a percentage point month-over-month, the Canadian Real Estate Association said in a release Thursday.
CREA said that the number of newly listed homes also declined for the second month in a row.
Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist, said in a statement that sellers likely weren’t getting offers they were willing to accept with few buyers in the market this fall, and have instead opted to “hunker down” in hopes of a better deal in 2024.
“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,” he said.
CREA’s home price index declined 1.1 per cent month-to-month. The national average sale price for a home in November was $646,134, up two per cent from the same time last year.
The national real estate body says that price declines are still “mainly an Ontario phenomenon,” but markets including the Fraser Valley, Halifax and Winnipeg also saw values drop in November.
On the other hand, CREA said Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador are seeing prices still hold firm or even rise heading into the final month of 2023.
A new forecast released from Royal LePage on Thursday expects the cooling in the housing market to reverse
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