Canada's home sales climb almost 4%, the fourth monthly rise in a row

Calgary Herald

a day ago

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Across the country there were 42,749 sales transactions in July, reported CREA. The national sales-to-new listings ratio climbed to 52 per cent, up from 50.1 per cent in June and 47.4 per cent in May.
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'Activity continues to pick up through the transition from the spring to the summer market, which is the opposite of a normal year, but this has not been a normal year,' said Valérie Paquin, CREA chair, in the report.
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The benchmark home price has remained mostly stable since May, while new supply was little changed month-over-month in July. The non-seasonally adjusted national average home price was $672,784 in July 2025, inching up 0.6 per cent from the same month last year.
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'When sales are rising and listings aren't, that means the market's getting tighter.,' said Cathcart, pointing to the fact that national home prices have stopped falling.
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Cathcart said it's unclear just how many buyers are waiting on the sidelines to jump into the market but noted that there is a three-month period in the fall where sellers list their homes that could draw more activity.
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There were 202,500 properties listed for sale across all Canadian MLS systems, up just over 10 per cent from a year earlier and in line with the long-term average for that time of the year, CREA reported.
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Royal Bank of Canada released its latest housing market forecast in August, predicting home resales would decline 3.5 per cent in Canada to 467,100 units this year.
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Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at RBC and author of the report, said he expected the first half of the year to see a 4.1 per cent pullback in resales, largely concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia. But he expected a 7.9 per cent rebound in home resales next year hitting 504,100 units (while still below the pre-pandemic five-year average of 511,000 units).
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Hogue said homebuyer confidence is now rebuilding after the initial shock of the global trade war launched in the spring. Still, he said this is by no means suggesting the market is snapping back to strong and solid activity.
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He added that while buyers may have a bit more bargaining power currently due to the increase in inventory, affordability remains a huge concern in expensive cities like Toronto.
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'We caution anyone not to get overly optimistic about the materiality of that improvement (in affordability conditions),' said Hogue. 'We do expect that ownership affordability will improve further over the rest of 2025, into 2026 but it's going to be modest … and (won't be) returning to pre-pandemic levels.'