The Canadian Real Estate Association says July marked the third consecutive month of fewer housing sales.
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“This strong price growth story is really a story about the Greater Toronto Area and the environs, and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, as well as selected other markets in the province”, Klump said. Sales were down in just over half of all markets last month, led by the Greater Vancouver area and the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
“This suggests that sales are being reined in by a lack of inventory and a further deterioration in affordability”, CREA chief economist Gregory Klump said in a release. Transactions in these two markets peaked in February of this year and have since dropped by 21.5% and 28.8%, respectively-much of the national sales decline in recent months reflects slowing activity in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
Similar big gains were noticed in Victoria (up 17.5 per cent) and Vancouver Island (up 11.6 per cent).
In Regina, for instance, home prices rose 2.7 per cent in the past year, while in Montreal, they were up 1.8 per cent. By contrast, prices were down -4.2 percent and -1.5 percent in Calgary and Saskatoon respectively, said the report.
But, “national sales and price trends continue to be heavily influenced by a handful of places in Ontario and British Columbia, masking significant variations in local housing market trends and conditions across Canada”, says CREA President Cliff Iverson. From a year earlier, the average sales price of C$480,743 rose 9.9 percent. Prices were 24.3 per cent higher than a year earlier, almost double Toronto’s rise and the biggest jump since the national tracking service was launched in 1999.
Actual (not seasonally adjusted) sales activity was down 2.9% year-over-year (year-over-year) in July 2016, marking the first year-over-year decline since January 2015 and the largest since April 2013.
If Vancouver and Toronto are excluded from calculations, the average price was $365,033, up seven per cent compared with the same month past year.
And if one excludes all of British Columbia and Ontario from the calculations, average prices actually slipped 0.2 per cent year over year.
Another sign of a Vancouver slowdown is that sales as a share of new listings fell to 62.9 percent in July, down from 71 percent a month earlier. CREA considers a ratio of 40 to 60 to be a balanced market, with anything above 60 to be a sellers’ market.
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Still, home prices kept rising, the report from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said, lifted by a surge in prices in Vancouver and Toronto. “All eyes will be on how prices in the former fare through the rest of the year, considering the new tax and already-moderating supply-demand conditions in that city”.
