It seems that the interest rate reality is finally catching up to the Canadian housing market, with very few positive data points to report when it comes to home sales in October 2023, as the Canadian Real Estate Association reports.
Sales up from 2022, down from September
Canadian home sales continued their steep decline, after a glimmer of hope as sales trended back up toward the 10-year moving average earlier this year.
Although up slightly (0.9 per cent) since last year, the number of homes sold in October fell 5.6 per cent below September sales:
Prices following suit
Much like sales volume, prices are in decline in the short-term (monthly) context, but up in the longer-term (yearly) context.
The House Price Index went down about 0.8 per cent, continuing the downward trend from the months prior, but up about 1.1 per cent since October 2022, showing that the market has not reached the severe lows we saw during last year’s selloff.
Still heading toward buyers’ market
Canada’s real estate market continued heading towards buyers’ market territory in October, with the sales-to-new listings ratio reaching a 10-year low at 49.5 per cent. Furthermore, there were 4.1 months of inventory nationally, up from the low of 3.1 months in May:
Financial stress on Canadians
New listings continued to outpace weakening sales. This is a likely indication that some financial stress has begun to impact households in Canada, and selling is the best option to relieve that stress.
Daniel Foch is a real estate broker, working in the real estate industry for over 15 years with various notable organizations such as Interrent REIT, CBRE, and Hydro One. Daniel and his team have transacted over $250M in real estate across a variety of asset classes. During his academic career, Daniel was an active instructor, contributor and researcher in the University of Guelph’s Real Estate Faculty, founder of The University’s International URECC event, and was awarded for affordable housing innovation by CMHC & The University of Guelph during his tenure at the university.
Daniel is a regular contributor in the Canadian media as one of the most trusted, unbiased, and balanced sources of real estate insight. As a result, his real estate expertise has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CBC, BNN Bloomberg, and The Globe and Mail, among others. Daniel has built a captive audience of over 100,000 real estate investors across multiple social media platforms by providing primary research and market analysis.
The post Canadians feeling the strain as weak sales persist first appeared on REM.
The post Canadians feeling the strain as weak sales persist appeared first on REM.