But some metros hit all-time highs. By Metro: Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Demand in Canada’s spring selling season has sunk into a morass, with sales down 9.8% from the already beaten-down levels a year ago. Supply of homes on the market has surged to 5.1 months, the highest since the 2020 lockdown. And the national price index has careened down further.
Prices of single-family properties in Canada fell by 1.1% in April from March, seasonally adjusted, and by 3.1% year-over-year, to the lowest level since May 2021, according to the Canada MLS Home Price Index released by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) today.
Since the crazy peak in February 2022, prices have plunged by 18.3%. But individual markets have vastly diverged, with Greater Toronto carving out a new multi-year low, while prices in Montreal and Quebec City rose to all-time highs.
Condo prices fell by 1.3% in April from March, to the lowest level since August 2021, and are down 4.4% year-over-year. Since the peak in March 2022, prices have dropped by 12.1%.
Prices in the major Canadian markets.
Big price drops to multi-year lows in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and smaller drops in Greater Vancouver coexist with continued price spikes in other markets, particularly Montreal and Quebec City. The Calgary market seems to have turned the corner after an astonishing four-year price spike.
The price indices below are in Canadian dollars and seasonally adjusted.
Greater Toronto Area, single-family MLS Home Price Benchmark Index:
- Month-to-month: -0.8%, to $1,212,000; the lowest since May 2021
- From peak in February 2022: -21.1%
- Year-over-year: -5.2%.
The crazy peak occurred in February 2022. Then false-hope recovery peaked in June 2023, and since then it has been mostly downhill.
Greater Toronto Area, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.9% to $584,200, lowest since February 2021.
- From peak in April 2022: -18.4%
- Year-over-year: -6.9%.
Hamilton-Burlington metro single family benchmark price (part of the “Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area”):
- Month-to-month: +0.9% to $876,300 about where it had been in May 2021
- From peak in February 2022: -22.5%
- Year-over-year: -3.4%.
Hamilton-Burlington metro condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.5% to $515,100, lowest since September 2021.
- From peak in April 2022: -18.6%
- Year-over-year: -3.4%.
Greater Vancouver single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.3%, to $1,989,000, below where it had been in January 2022.
- From peak in March 2022: -3.8%
- Year-over-year: -0.6%.
Greater Vancouver condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.2%, to $750,400, where they’d first been in February 2022.
- From high in October 2023: -3.4%.
- Year-over-year: -2.1%, the 10th year-over-year decline in a row.
Victoria, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: unchanged at $1,173,800, where it had first been in December 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -7.1%
- Year-over-year: +3.9%.
Victoria, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.1% to $561,100, where it had first been in December 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -7.0%
- Year-over-year: +0.6%.
Ottawa, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.5% to $691,400 where it had first been in November 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -9.4%
- Year-over-year: +1.4%.
Ottawa, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.1% to $401,300, where it had been in April 2021
- From peak in March 2022: -10.4%
- Year-over-year: -2.6%.
Calgary, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.5%, to $688,200, same as in October, after a four-year spike totaling 55%.
- Year-over-year: +3.1%, smallest increase since April 2023.
Calgary, condo benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.5%, to $340,300.
- From peak in August 2024: -2.9%
- Year-over-year: +0.6%.
Montreal, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.7%, to $669,000, a new all-time high.
- Year-over-year: +9.2%.
Halifax-Dartmouth, single family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.7% to $557,300
- From peak in March 2022: -1.7%
- Year-over-year: +2.1%.
Edmonton, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -0.1% to $494,300.
- Year-over-year: +12.7%
Quebec City Area, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: +0.4%, to $467,200, a new all-time high, after a four-year 73% spike.
- Year-over-year: +16.1%
Winnipeg, single-family benchmark price:
- Month-to-month: -1.2% to $397,700
- Year-over-year: +8.0%
Even in California, inventories of homes for sale are now surging; the issue isn’t new listings, but the plunge in demand that has caused inventory to pile up. Active listings in San Diego +70% yoy, Los Angeles +50% yoy, San Jose & Silicon Valley +67%; and San Francisco metro +43% to the highest April level since at least 2016. Read: California Inventory of Homes for Sale Suddenly Piles Up: +51% Year-over-Year, to Highest April in Years
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THanks WR for this report.
This still has to fall a lot in both USA and CA.
Trends are moving in that direction for sure.
The thing about Toronto is all the available land has been taken up. Farther afield, in the west and north (Milton and Barrie, respectively) there’s land for new developments and subdivisions. But the population of Toronto has boomed and everybody wants a home in city limits and the supply has stayed the same — hence the permanent increase in the value of homes. The price may drop, but it will only drop so much.
This is Greater Toronto, not just the city of Toronto. This is a huge metro going way out. And high rises are replacing older buildings.
Greater Toronto is the 7th largest metro in North America according to wikipedia. Around 6.7 million people.
About 1 in 6 of the 40 million Canadians lives in Greater Toronto.
Color me “surprised”!
At this time, Toronto home prices have already dropped by 20% or so from peak and the bottom is no where in sight.
I guess, Toronto would fall much more over time.
Cool, SoCal please follow your Canadian brothers foot step and prove that our price decline here is bigger and more beautiful please…
A number of years ago, particularly in Toronto, Boomers had all sorts of extra money so they invested in Condos to rent them out. I had lots of friends to this. Developers noted this and started reducing the size of the condos to less than 500 sq feet – now called Dog Crate condos. The problem is that people were taking out massive mortgages with large monthly payments and renting them out at those monthly payment levels. Then people wouldn’t rent them so the Boomers tried to sell them, but they would have to sell them at a major loss. Some are holding on and having their renters pay less than the Boomers’ monthly payments, essentially subsidizing the renters. And on top of that, there are thousands of new condos that started being built a few years ago and are ready to move in, and people are defaulting on the sale, around 30% failure right now.
Toronto condos are going to go down an awful lot further.
And for Ottawa, the new government MAY reduce employment in government by up to 40,000, which will cause a real drop in real estate, like it did before.
Some notes I took from a resent X/YoutTube interview with Ron the Mortgage Guy and Mark Morris a GTA RE lawyer.
– 25-30% of people that are supposed to close are walking away NOW in Toronto
– 2027 product is coming on the market that is even more expensive
Essence is price differential that exists between new build and re-sale and not going way…
– new build products stemming from 2019-2021 still over-priced by ~20-25%
– closing makes buyer underwater on purchase (original price)
Not sure how this will resolve but probably just a sideways market for a number of years especially with Liberals back in.
It is those pesky Boomers again!
Always the Boomers!
i had no clue Vancouver was so expensive until this article. Wow!
I think a lot of people from Asia bought safety deposit box housing in Vancouver…Move money overseas. Yeah, it’s expensive rains a bunch in the winter. It’s cool city, it reminds me of a Star Trek federation city, people all over the world living together. I dig it! Close to whistler and closer to other ski resorts.
It’s a beautiful city and there has been massive Chinese money laundering in real estate there.
Canada has a foreign buyer ban in place in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto until Jan 2027. They got that going for them, maybe some pent up demand from foreign buyers or they can repeal the ban sooner. They wanted more affordable housing it’s happening!
Just because “they have a ban” doesn’t mean that it’s actually working.
Prices suggest “ban evasion” by foreign buyers working in collaboration with Canadians…
Alternatively, native Canadians buying at the current bubble prices may be the bag holders.
Are these inflation adjusted prices? If not is there a rough percentage they would change by?
These ARE inflation indices, of House Price Inflation. It’s conceptually wrong to adjust one inflation index (House Price Inflation) with another inflation index, such as Consumer Price Inflation or Producer Price Inflation or Wage Inflation or Grade Inflation.
Not suggesting this will be reality nor will mortgage rates necessarily move in line with lower interest rates, but if was in the market to be buy or sell I would hold out as well. Not hard to understand why things are declining so slowly, even given the housing market moves at a different pace. Regardless of inflation news, which is generally accepted as heading in a positive direction, the narrative in mainstream news is rates will be coming down. Perception of reality is reality. I am speaking more of US market since Canada seems to have some similarities but also a different beast.
Federal deficit spending is now so large and clearly not to be contained in the next 4 years, it won’t matter much if the Fed cuts short term rates, long term rates are probably not coming down unless QE returns in a big way.
” Regardless of inflation news, which is generally accepted as heading in a positive direction, the narrative in mainstream news is rates will be coming down. Perception of reality is reality.”
Sorry, rates are not coming down.
FED tried this, cut short term rates but long term rates went up despite FED cuts.
Does the CREA spout median prices like the NAR does in the U.S.?
Are these charts of median prices?
If not, how does their index work and why can’t we do that here in the States?
No, these are not median prices. These are “benchmark” prices — as it says in the chart headings. Meaning: prices of locally typical mid-tier homes. This avoids the shifts in mix of what sells, which skews median prices. And it avoids the issues that come with sales-pairs, especially the arbitrary formulas for weighing the prior sale by how long ago it happened.
I use the “raw mid-tier” data from Zillow for my “Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America” series. It’s based on locally typical homes and also avoids the issue of mix in median prices, and the issues associated with sales pairs. So the CREA “benchmark” method is similar to Zillow’s “mid-tier” method.
If prices drop by a large amount, a lot of people are going to be in serious trouble. There are no 30 year mortgage there. It’s usually 5 year and then take out another 5 year to pay off the existing 5 year. If the amount owed is more than the home value….. Uh oh!
Torontonian here. It has been an run-up like no other, with homes 2-4x in the last 15 years, and people were talking bubble in 2010 (prices had doubled between 2000 and 2010). Secret bank bailouts, lower for longer rates, foreign money friendliness, mass immigration, airBnb, investment oriented development and marketing, psychology fomo, cultural move to fetishize homeownership….it has been a perfect resonance of everything to juice this market.
Young Canadians without family money, and underhoused of any age are justifiably pissed because they have been sacrificed to the gods of real estate speculation at all cost. Canada’s governments at all levels are addicted to the revenues, many have benefited directly from the policies. But not investing in productive businesses, Canada has the lowest productivity in the G7, and the currency has crumbled. The new PM Carney wants to support housing prices (like Trudeau), print more money, and fight the U.S. elbows up.
I predict many victims in this housing market will have to live with parents, bunk up with roommates, or leave the country for greener pastures. It has happened elsewhere, why not here. Many are thinking of leaving southern Ontario. Maybe further rent reductions and price reductions will reduce that, but I’m not making any bets.