But in some metros, prices continued to spike. By Metro: Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec City.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
As sales plunged and supply surged, prices of single-family properties in Canada fell by 1.1% in March from February and were down by 1.7% year-over-year, and by 16.5% from the crazy peak in February 2022, and are back to where they’d first been in August 2021, according to the seasonally adjusted Canada MLS Home Price Index released by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) today.
But individual markets show drastically different price-dynamics: The gigantic Greater Toronto and Hamilton market got hit hardest, but prices continued to surge in the Prairies, in the Province of Quebec, and on the East Coast.
Condo prices fell by 0.7% in March from February, by 3.2% year-over-year, and by 11% from the peak in March 2022, to the lowest level since October 2021.
In Toronto, condo prices fell to multi-year lows, and even in Calgary, condo prices started to sag last year. In Greater Vancouver, condo prices declined only a little from the peak in 2023 and are roughly where they had been in February 2022.
Sales plunged, supply surged.
Home sales in Canada fell by 4.8% in March from February, seasonally adjusted, on top of the declines in the prior three months, and by 9.3% year-over-year, and by 20% from November, to the lowest level for any March since 2009, according to CREA today.
Year-over-year, sales plunged by 24.6% in the province of Ontario, driven they plunge in the Greater Toronto Area, and by 9.6% in British Columbia, driven by the declines in Greater Vancouver.
New listings rose by 3.0% in March from February. Inventory on the market for sale rose by 3.3% month-to-month, and by 18.3% year-over-year to 165,800, which is still below average for this time of the year, but sales have plunged, and so supply jumped to 5.1 months at the current rate of sales, the highest since the spike in April and May 2020.
Every market dances to its own drummer.
Big price drops and multi-year lows in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area coexist with continued price spikes in smaller markets, such as Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Quebec City.
In the US, a similar pattern is playing out, with big price drops and multi-year lows in some markets, and continued price increases in others: The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: The Price Drops & Gains of 33 Largest Costliest Housing Markets.
The price indices below are seasonally adjusted, in Canadian dollars.
Greater Toronto Area, single-family MLS Home Price Benchmark Index:
- Month-to-month: -1.6%, to at $1,262,100; the lowest since August 2021
- From peak in February 2022: -18.6%
- Year-over-year: -3.8%.
The three descending peaks occurred in February 2022, June 2023, and June 2024. The peak of the prior housing-mania spike occurred in April 2017.
Greater Toronto Area, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.4% to $641,800, lowest since September 2021.
- From peak in April 2022: -16.3%
- Year-over-year: -4.5%, with year-over-year declines in 26 of the past 27 months.
Hamilton-Burlington metro single family benchmark price (part of the “Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area”):
- Month-to-month: -1.0% to $864,700, lowest since March 2021
- From peak in February 2022: -23.4%
- Year-over-year: -4.1%.
Hamilton-Burlington metro condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.2% to $517,900, back where it had first been in September 2021.
- From peak in April 2022: -18.2%
- Year-over-year: -2.5%.
Greater Vancouver single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.2%, to $2,015,700, about where it had been in January 2022.
- From peak in March 2022: -2.5%
- Year-over-year: +0.8%.
Greater Vancouver condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: unchanged, at $761,400, where they’d first been in March 2022.
- From high in October 2023: -1.9%.
- Year-over-year: -0.6%, the 9th year-over-year decline in a row.
Victoria, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.4% to $1,178,000, where it had first been in December 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -6.9%
- Year-over-year: +4.6%.
Ottawa, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.1% to $696,100 where it had first been in November 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -8.8%
- Year-over-year: +3.2%.
Ottawa, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: unchanged at $400,300, lowest since April 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -10.6%
- Year-over-year: -4.2%.
Calgary, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.2%, to $694,600, roughly unchanged from December and January, after a relentless two-year spike.
- Year-over-year: +4.5%, smallest increase since June 2023.
Calgary, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.5%, to $341,900, the 6th month in a row of declines after the spike.
- From peak in August 2024: -2.4%
- Year-over-year: +2.4%, the lowest year-over-year gain since March 2021.
Montreal, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.2%, to $663,200.
- Year-over-year: +7.7%.
Halifax-Dartmouth, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.3% to $561,200
- From peak in March 2022: -0.7%
- Year-over-year: +4.9%.
Edmonton, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.6% to $496,600.
- Year-over-year: +14.2%
Quebec City Area, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +1.0%, to $465,600
- Year-over-year: +17.7%
Winnipeg, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +1.7% to $402,100
- Year-over-year: +9.8%
In the US, a similar pattern is playing out, with big price drops and multi-year lows in some markets, and continued price increases in others: The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: The Price Drops & Gains of 33 Largest Costliest Housing Markets.
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Asset prices like housing coming down 20% is not necessarily a bad thing if they doubled since COVID.
Correct, for the economy overall, that spike in home prices, especially in already expensive markets, was a distortion that is causing a lot of damage now. Unwinding that distortion, though not comfortable, would be a good thing longer term for the economy.
But for individuals, whether that’s good or bad depends on which side of the trade they’re on. Could be a very bad thing if they’re too leveraged on the wrong side of the trade. One of those things that later on turns into one of the “lessons learned.”
People expect asset valuations only to go up now. They also expect them to go up by more than inflation.
So basically boomers, who own a majority of the housing, are sitting on fat retirements, social security checks, and inflated house values while younger generations may not ever get SS (or a very low amount or higher taxes to pay for it), retirement accounts that don’t matter right now, and a very expensive path to homeownership.
Yay
Hey, a lot of Boomers were killed or maimed in the jungles and rice patties of Vietnam. A lot of the Vietnam war veterans who lived and returned to their home countries were treated with disrespect for many years.
Harvey, you are spot on and myself and a few of my friends lived the disrespect experiences back in the early 1970s. But my “time” got me the G.I. bill and I went to school on that $222/month keeping my mouth shut at the school.
Yes, the vets deserve respect but the ones that saw combat are only about 2% of the boomers. Another 2% served in vietnam but didnt see combat. The other 96% dont get to claim any special sacrifice in that regard and at least some of that 96% were the ones that did the spitting on the 2% that saw combat.
Bad if you live in the Toronto suburbs and have a lake place, a Florida place, and one or more mortgages.
Good if you’ve been looking for a winter home in Southwest Florida and unable to buy due to scant listings over last several years.
Montreal average tax on a strong salary?
50%.
Is it the worst place in the west to live?
And yet there they are. My sister lives in Westmount quite nicely.
Thanks WR for this report.
Assets like Housing need to come way down for the prices and rates to make sense.
With the present, and likely continuing, political and economic turmoil in the US, I would expect more and more Americans to be buying homes in Canada.
Because Canada doesn’t have that?
“That” being Trump.
“That” too shall pass and not like is won’t be a revolving clown show controlled by corporate interests.
Canada is too cold for us fragile Americans!
Lol what are you smoking
I swear you people live in a completely different reality
Lol never
When I look at all of these graphs I see Wiley E. Coyote holding an anvil off the edge of the cliff.
That’s just me.
Howdy Harry. YEP, Just like housing bust 1 in USA, Looney Tunes, Porky Pig , That s all folks…..
Condos will be first to fall, They will bring down the single family houses as well .Lots of condo owners need to sell their condo to move up to single family and that is not going to happen.
Agreed those first few charts look like they’re ready to fall off a cliff! 🤞
Canada is the Siberia of the Western Hemisphere. Real estate prices there should be at bargain basement prices. Thank you very much.
90% of Canadians live within 150 miles of our border. Not to say they don’t have strong winters but hardly unlivable.
Winnipeg, Edmonton and Quebec were always lower in price because:
Winnipeg (Winter-peg) has very cold winters with wind chills as low as -55C that it was once colder than planet Mars.
Edmonton (Dead-monton) is in a boom-bust oil province. Also extremely cold winters. Not the Dallas of Canada as one expects. More like a small town.
Quebec City and Montreal are French speaking, higher tax rates, and lower wages compared to Toronto. Even in the Montreal tourist traps, speaking English is frowned upon unless it’s an English-Canadian or American subsidiary company.
That ‘French connection’ should pay dividends when it comes making trade deals with the EU. In fact, I think it would make far more sense for Canada to join the EU than to become a US state.
Neither is going to happen.
What’s your point
Randy Bachman (BTO) wrote a song called “Prairie Town”. It is about how cold it is in Winnipeg. My favorite version of the song is with both Randy Bachman and Neil Young. (both Canadians)
Howdy Folks. Whether a Govern ment controlled Canadian or Free American, hope and pray the RE Bubbles hiss and hiss for a few years and do not POP…….
In any livable city, the cost of single family houses should not be more than 5-6x of median salary. If one leaves Californian cities and New York, there are lot of cities in USA where this is the norm.
In Toronto, with median salary of around 85k, houses are 1.5 million. Makes no logical sense.
Government is turning a blind eye as pension funds are invested in real estate.
Wolf,
What happened to the Victoria condo chart. Did that get accidentally dropped?
It kinda looks the same as the SF chart, so there was no reason to post it. I did that with several other smaller markets, with relatively small condo markets, as you can tell. They don’t really move the needle.