Canada’s home prices slipped for a third consecutive month in August, according to the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, pushing the benchmark to its lowest level since April 2023. A second measure released two days earlier by the Canadian Real Estate Association points in a similar direction nationally, but the two indices tell noticeably different stories about which cities are actually driving the slide.
The Teranet-National Bank index, a repeat-sales measure covering 11 major metropolitan areas, fell 0.2 per cent from July to August, its third straight monthly decline and a drop of 4.2 per cent from its November 2025 peak, National Bank of Canada economist Daren King wrote in the Sept. 17 release. Year over year, the index was down 3.6 per cent.
CREA’s national figures, released Sept. 15, cover the same period but pull from a different basket: listings across the entire country rather than 11 large metros. The national average home price was $668,219 in August, up 0.6 per cent from a year earlier, while CREA’s own MLS Home Price Index, which adjusts for the mix of properties sold, was down 3 per cent year over year and essentially flat from July. National sales fell 6.9 per cent from a year ago and 0.7 per cent from July.
“Sales activity and price trends were largely unchanged for a fourth consecutive month in August,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist, adding that fresh economic headwinds are likely to “dampen the prospects for further housing market momentum heading into 2027.”
New listings climbed 3.3 per cent from July to just under 200,000 properties, CREA said, pushing the national sales-to-new-listings ratio down to 49.1 per cent from 51.1 per cent, a level associated with conditions favouring buyers. Months of inventory held at 4.8, unchanged for a fourth straight month.
The two indices’ national headlines are close enough, down 3.6 per cent annually on Teranet’s measure, down 3 per cent on CREA’s benchmark, that they read as confirmation of the same slowdown. Their city-level numbers tell a different story entirely.
Teranet’s data shows Vancouver posted the steepest annual decline among the 11 tracked metros, down 6.5 per cent, followed by Hamilton at 6.2 per cent and Toronto at 6.1 per cent. Toronto still managed a 0.4 per cent gain from July to August even as its year-over-year figure stayed deeply negative, King’s report shows. Winnipeg, Hamilton and Halifax all posted monthly declines in August as well.
At the other end, Quebec City recorded the largest annual gain among the tracked cities at 9 per cent, with Montreal up 4.1 per cent and Winnipeg up 2.4 per cent year over year despite its monthly dip. Calgary and Victoria each posted small monthly gains of 0.2 and 0.5 per cent respectively in August, even as five of the 11 tracked cities slipped.
The gap between Vancouver’s 6.5 per cent annual decline and Quebec City’s 9 per cent annual gain, a swing of more than 15 percentage points within the same national index, is considerably wider than the gap between the two indices’ national headline numbers. That is a function of methodology as much as market conditions: Teranet tracks repeat sales of the same properties in 11 large metros only, while CREA’s benchmark blends listings from smaller markets and rural areas that never show up in the Teranet data at all.
For anyone buying or selling this fall, the practical takeaway is that a single national number, however it is calculated, obscures more than it reveals. A seller in Quebec City or Winnipeg is working in a market still posting annual gains, while an owner in Vancouver, Hamilton or Toronto is contending with a market down more than 6 per cent from where it stood a year ago on the same yardstick.
The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent at its Sept. 2 announcement. Its next scheduled decision falls on Oct. 28, a date both CREA and National Bank of Canada flagged as a factor in whether the current slowdown extends into the winter.
