OTTAWA, ON, Jan. 16, 2023 /CNW/ – The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has updated its forecast for home sales activity via Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) Systems of Canadian real estate boards and associations in 2023 and extended the outlook to 2024.
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Sales activity, historical, forecast and 10-year average (CNW Group/Canadian Real Estate Association)
The extent to which some 2023 figures have been revised from the previous forecast reflects a change to publication dates which has allowed an additional full quarter of data to be included in the forecast. As a result, this forecast is populated with an additional six months of data compared to the previous forecast published in September 2022.
National home sales have been more or less stable since the summer, suggesting the downward adjustment to sales activity from rising interest rates and high uncertainty may be in the rear-view mirror.
Home prices remain mixed across Canada. With significantly higher borrowing costs, it’s not surprising prices have mostly cooled from their peaks in more expensive markets within Ontario and British Columbia. Prices have been holding up much better in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, with Quebec and the Maritime provinces landing somewhere in between. While prices in most markets have declined from a short-lived sharp peak in early 2022, they remain well above where they were in the summer of 2020.
With the shock from the Bank of Canada’s efforts to control inflation fading, and uncertainty about the path for housing markets and where borrowing costs will ultimately land also likely to wind down over the next few months, the theme of our 2023 forecast is not recovery, but the start of a turnaround.
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