A square foot of house in Vancouver’s west side sold for $1,072 in the first half of 2026. The same square foot in Saint John, N.B., went for $229, according to Century 21 Canada’s annual price-per-square-foot survey, a spread of more than four to one across the country’s housing map.
The survey, published in late July and covering January through June 2026 against the same period a year earlier, tracked sales in 50 communities from Charlottetown to Victoria. Century 21 franchisees calculated the median price per square foot in their own markets, then cross-referenced the figures against Canadian Real Estate Association MLS board statistics before they were compiled nationally.
The headline number is the gap between Canada’s most and least expensive markets. The more useful one is the direction each region is moving. Vancouver’s downtown condo market fell nearly 15 per cent to $1,026 a square foot from $1,206 a year earlier, the steepest drop in the survey. Vancouver’s east side detached houses fell 14.6 per cent to $807, North Vancouver detached houses fell 11.7 per cent, and Ottawa’s townhouse market dropped 17.96 per cent to $507 from $618, the single largest decline Century 21 recorded anywhere in the country.
The Prairies moved the opposite way. Regina’s detached house price per square foot rose 13.09 per cent to $337 from $298, the strongest gain in the survey. Saskatoon detached houses rose 5.31 per cent, Brandon 9.7 per cent and Winnipeg 4.27 per cent, even as Winnipeg’s own condo prices climbed a smaller 1.5 per cent.
That divergence holds up against each region’s own board data, gathered independently of Century 21’s survey. The Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board said its year-to-date detached and condominium average prices through August were the highest on record, with detached prices running eight per cent above the five-year average and condos five per cent above it, board president Dan O’Brien said in the board’s August release. In Metro Vancouver, Greater Vancouver Realtors put the region’s benchmark price for a detached home at $1,799,400 in August, down 7.2 per cent year over year, with the composite benchmark for all property types down 5.6 per cent, the same direction the price-per-square-foot survey found two months earlier.
Todd Shyiak, Century 21 Canada’s executive vice-president, said the pattern reads less like one national story than 50 local ones. “Canada’s real estate pricing story is diverse,” with swings that vary “down to individual neighbourhoods,” Shyiak said. He added that many Ontario brokers are reporting “the tightest market most of their agents have experienced in their careers,” even as Ontario’s benchmark prices broadly softened: Ottawa’s detached figure fell 13.77 per cent to $639 a square foot, and Toronto’s downtown condo market fell 7.8 per cent to $650.
Not every Prairie market moved in lockstep, and not every expensive city fell uniformly. St. Albert, Alta., detached houses rose 3.72 per cent, while Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., condos jumped 14.86 per cent even as the same city’s detached houses fell almost 10 per cent, a reminder that within a single city, property types can move in opposite directions.
Geneva Tetrault, owner of Century 21 Masters in Edmonton, said her market has “settled into a balanced market” with steadier transactions and less of the urgency that marked recent years. In Charlottetown, where detached prices rose 2.4 per cent to $256 a square foot, the second-lowest figure in the survey, Century 21 Colonial Realty owner Joel Ives described “stabilization, but also a little bit of apprehension” among buyers weighing higher costs elsewhere in their budgets.
The survey lands as the national market cools by a different measure. CREA reported this month that home sales stalled for a fourth straight month in August, with markets now pricing in a Bank of Canada rate move. Set against that backdrop, Century 21’s numbers suggest the national narrative of a single cooling market obscures more than it explains: measured city by city and property type by property type, the past year of Canadian real estate produced not one trend, but dozens running in different directions at once.
