National home prices rose just 0.6 per cent year over year to an average of $668,219 in August, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported Sept. 15, even as sales dipped 0.7 per cent from July and sat 6.9 per cent below last August’s pace. But that modest national number obscures a housing market moving in opposite directions from city to city, according to a Canada News Media review of the same month’s data from six of the country’s largest real estate boards.
CREA’s home price index was flat month over month but down 3.0 per cent from a year earlier, and the number of properties for sale climbed 1.4 per cent to just under 200,000, one of the largest supply cushions in years. “Sales activity and price trends were largely unchanged for a fourth consecutive month,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist. CREA chair Garry Bhaura pointed to the “noticeable increase in new supply in August,” which he called “broad based.”
Underneath that national plateau, Canada’s two priciest markets kept softening. The Greater Toronto Area’s average price fell 2.7 per cent year over year to $993,410 in August, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board reported, with sales down for a second straight month. Condo apartments in the GTA averaged $617,593, down 3.6 per cent, while townhomes fell 8.6 per cent to $786,817. “Ownership housing in the GTA has remained relatively affordable over the past year, with average prices dipping and mortgage rates remaining somewhat flat,” said Jason Mercer, TRREB’s chief information officer. TRREB president Daniel Steinfeld said buyers face “a trade-off between waiting for greater economic certainty and purchasing before prices move higher” if inventory tightens.
Illustrative stock photo. Not a photo of any specific property or listing mentioned in this article.
Metro Vancouver fell further. Greater Vancouver Realtors reported a composite benchmark price of $1,081,900 in August, down 5.6 per cent year over year, the steepest decline among the boards reviewed. Sales of 1,869 units were 4.6 per cent below last August and more than 20 per cent under the region’s 10-year average. “The soft August sales data suggest the modest downward revisions we recently made to our 2026 forecast were timely and prudent,” said GVR chief economist Andrew Lis.
Calgary’s benchmark price slipped 1.08 per cent year over year to $569,800, the Calgary Real Estate Board reported, as sales dropped 16.4 per cent and new listings fell 9.7 per cent, pushing months of supply to 3.92.
Illustrative stock photo of a kitchen interior, used for visual context only.
Montreal moved the other way. The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers said median prices in the Montreal census metropolitan area rose 3 per cent for single-family homes, 4 per cent for condos and 2 per cent for plexes in August, even as total sales fell 13 per cent to 2,853 transactions and active listings jumped 18 per cent to 20,128. “August’s results confirm that the Montreal residential market continues to rebalance,” said Camille Laberge, the association’s assistant director and senior economist, who noted that downtown and the Sud-Ouest borough are now posting the highest listing counts ever recorded there.
Ottawa and Winnipeg also bucked the downward trend. The Ottawa Real Estate Board’s average price edged up 0.3 per cent to $688,253 despite sales falling 18.6 per cent, a pattern board president Tami Eades called “not a simple story of the market moving uniformly in one direction.” In Winnipeg, the regional real estate board said year-to-date average prices for both detached homes and condos through August were the highest on record, even though the August detached average of $439,216 dipped 3 per cent from a year earlier while condo prices rose 2 per cent to $283,715.
Illustrative stock photo of a living room interior, used for visual context only.
The city-by-city split matters for what it actually costs to qualify for a mortgage, and falling prices have not made buying easier everywhere. Ratehub.ca’s August affordability report, published Sept. 17, found the income needed to qualify for an average-priced home fell by $1,510 in Toronto, $1,130 in Vancouver and $1,110 in Montreal from July. But it rose $1,360 in Halifax, $830 in Ottawa and $650 in Fredericton, the report found, because the average five-year fixed mortgage rate offered by Canada’s five largest banks ticked up to 4.55 per cent in August from 4.54 per cent in July, even after the Bank of Canada held its overnight rate at 2.25 per cent for a seventh consecutive decision on Sept. 2. Ratehub’s calculations assume a 10 per cent down payment, a 25-year amortization and the federal mortgage stress test, which requires borrowers to qualify at their contract rate plus two percentage points or 5.25 per cent, whichever is higher.
Together, the numbers point to a market where the national average increasingly means less than it used to, with Western and Central Canada’s biggest cities still working through excess supply while Ottawa, Winnipeg and parts of Atlantic Canada tighten.
