The Canadian Real Estate Association, which represents Realtors, said in a release Tuesday that the national average sales price of a home sold in October was $644,643. That’s down 9.9 percent from the same month last year and even more than the peak of $816,720 in February 2022. This was before the Bank of Canada began its aggressive campaign to raise interest rates to curb inflation. The central bank has raised the benchmark rate half a dozen times since then, and the impact on the housing market has been dramatic. Average sales prices have fallen more than 20 percent since February, with declines seen in nearly every market across the country. However, CREA says the median sales price can be misleading since it’s easily skewed by sales in big, expensive markets like Toronto and Vancouver, so it’s touting a different number, known as the Home Price Index, as a better gauge of the whole Buy. HPI reached $756,200 in October. That’s a 1.2 percent drop over the month, which CREA said was the smallest drop since June. But it’s also down 8.2 percent from six months ago. Any way you slice the numbers, Canada’s housing market data shows a market that’s much cooler than it was previously, but CREA noted that it’s not hard to see evidence that things are turning around again. “October provided another month’s worth of data suggesting the slowdown in Canadian housing markets is ending,” said CREA economist Shaun Cathcart. “Sales actually rose from September to October, and the month-over-month price decline narrowed for the fourth month in a row.” More to come.
