After soaring to record highs in early 2022, home prices across Canada took a significant hit as interest rates increased.
After eight Bank of Canada rate hikes in just 10 months, the national non-seasonally adjusted benchmark price hit $713,700 in January 2023, a 17.8% decline from the March 2022 peak.
The drastic decline spurred real estate agency Zoocasa to analyze benchmark prices in 49 cities and regions across Canada in an effort to determine when they were last this low.
According to the data, sourced from the Canadian Real Estate Association, the last time the national benchmark price hovered around its current level was in August 2021, when it sat just over $710K.
In several Ontario cities, though, prices haven’t been this low in roughly two years. January 2023 benchmark prices in Hamilton-Burlington ($809,800), Kitchener-Waterloo ($705,100), London-St. Thomas ($568,300), Mississauga ($1,038,300), and Ottawa ($603,900) are nearing their February 2021 levels.
Across the country, a further seven locales, including Edmonton ($362,200), Winnipeg ($323,600), and the Niagara Region ($629,100), are seeing prices akin to March 2021 figures.
In the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver — Canada’s most expensive regions — benchmark prices are closing in on September 2021 levels. As of January 2023, they sit at $1,078,900 and $1,111,400, respectively.
With affordability already elusive in Ontario and British Columbia prior to their 2022 peaks, many would-be buyers were sidelined earlier than in other markets, putting the breaks on additional price increases.
On the east coast, though, prices continued to rise. While the vast majority of markets included in Zoocasa’s report have seen their benchmark prices fall back to 2021 levels, in each of the Atlantic cities analyzed prices have reverted to 2022 figures.
In St. John’s, the January 2023 benchmark price of $316,300 is comparable to June 2022. At $343,600, prices in Prince Edward Island are nearing June 2022. Halifax-Dartmouth’s benchmark of $490,700 hasn’t been approached since February 2022.
Zoocasa
Zoocasa
The downturn has been enough to draw some buyers out of the woodwork. According to insurance comparison platform RATESDOTCA, mortgage purchase quotes were up 48% year-over-year in January.
While the jump is a seasonal norm, the fact that mortgage quotes have surpassed what was seen during the “hot” market of early 2022, “indicates a new wave of interested buyers,” RATESDOTCA said.
Written By
Zoe Demarco
Zoe Demarco is a Staff Writer at STOREYS and was formerly the Urbanized Editor at Daily Hive. Born and raised in Toronto, she has a passion for the city’s ever-changing urban landscape.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
