Home sales in Ottawa fell 18.6 per cent in August compared with a year earlier, nearly three times the 6.9 per cent decline the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reported for the country as a whole, according to figures the Ottawa Real Estate Board (OREB) released Sept. 3. Yet Ottawa’s benchmark price rose 1.0 per cent over the same 12 months, even as CREA’s national price index fell 3 per cent. The two releases, read side by side, describe a market where the sharpest local sales pullback of the summer did not translate into the price drop that pattern usually predicts.
OREB’s numbers show 1,002 homes changed hands in the city in August, down 18.6 per cent from August 2025 and down 24.4 per cent from July. The composite benchmark price, the board’s measure of a typical Ottawa home, climbed to $637,700. The average sale price was $688,253, up 0.3 per cent year over year, while the median price slipped 1.2 per cent to $622,357. New listings held flat at 2,119, but active listings rose 11.3 per cent to 4,496, pushing months of inventory to 4.5 from 3.5 in July, a sign the city is tilting toward buyers even with prices firm.
“Prices remained relatively steady despite the pullback in sales, which tells us this is not a simple story of the market moving uniformly in one direction,” OREB president Tami Eades said in the release.
Nationally, CREA’s Sept. 15 report put August sales at 37,504, down 6.9 per cent year over year and down 0.7 per cent from July on a seasonally adjusted basis. The national average price was $668,219, up 0.6 per cent, while the MLS Home Price Index, a benchmark meant to strip out shifts in what types of homes are selling, was down 3 per cent from a year earlier and flat month over month. The national sales-to-new-listings ratio fell to 49.1 per cent from 51.1 per cent in July, below the long-term average of 54.7 per cent, and months of inventory held at 4.8, unchanged for a fourth straight month.
“Sales activity and price trends were largely unchanged for a fourth consecutive month in August,” CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart said, adding that “a rate hike is not only back on the table for this year but already priced in by markets” after fixed mortgage rates rose on higher bond yields. CREA chair Garry Bhaura said the increase in new supply nationally in August “was both broad based across all the largest markets and most apparent towards the end of the month.”
BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic described the broader market as soft by historical standards. “Volumes and prices continue to carve out bottoms in the hardest-hit markets, but the recovery is going to be flat with little in the pipeline to trigger a sharp rebound,” he said.
The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent on Sept. 2, its seventh consecutive hold, while flagging rising inflation risks, according to the central bank’s own rate announcement. That backdrop helps explain why Ottawa’s inventory buildup has not yet dented its benchmark price the way it has in some other markets this year: buyers facing higher borrowing costs are pulling back on volume first, while sellers in a still-thin resale market have had less reason to cut asking prices.
Ottawa’s divergence from the national trend is not unique among Canadian cities this month, but it runs in the opposite direction from what showed up elsewhere in August, where several markets posted price declines alongside softer sales. Whether Ottawa’s benchmark price keeps climbing while sales stay depressed, or whether the rising months of inventory eventually catches up to price, will depend in part on whether the Bank of Canada’s next moves ease or add to the borrowing costs both CREA and OREB pointed to this month.
