Little change in June home sales
Steve Randall
Mortgage Broker News
After a few months of increases, Canadian home sales took a pause in June with little change from the previous month.
The latest stats from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show a 0.2% decline in sales month-over-month in June while year-over-year activity on an unadjusted basis was up 0.3%.
MLS sales had increased month-over-month in March, April, and May.
Markets were split in June with the largest gains in Quebec and Southern Ontario, while several markets saw declines including Greater Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax-Dartmouth, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“There’s a growing divergence in Canadian housing market trends between eastern and western Canada,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist. “While sales activity in Canada’s three westernmost provinces appears to have stopped deteriorating, it will be some time before supply and demand there becomes better balanced and the outlook for home prices improves.”
Listings rise, prices flat
There was a 0.8% rise in new listings in June and there was 5 months of supply, the lowest since January 2018 but nearing the long-term average of 5.3 months. The national sales-to-new listings ratio was 57.1%, down from the 57.7% posted in May.
CREA says that 80% of local markets were balanced in June, the largest share in over 3 years.
Prices were essentially flat with the seasonally adjusted Aggregate Composite MLS® HPI up 0.3% month-over-month. It was down by 0.3% year-over-year on an unadjusted basis.
Prices were flat on a month-over-month basis on Vancouver Island and in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Moncton. Material declines were limited to the GVA (-1.3%), the Fraser Valley (0.8%) and the Okanagan Valley (-0.5%).
By contrast, monthly gains were posted in Barrie (+1.4%), Hamilton (+1.3%), Niagara (+1.2%), Guelph (+1.1%), Ottawa (+0.7%), Greater Montreal (+0.7%), the GTA (+0.6%) and Oakville (0.3%).
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