Canadian Housing

March brought a mixed bag of activity to Canada’s housing market. Resales continued to linger around February levels at the national level—still softer than activity that took place pre-pandemic.

Too many Canadians are struggling to find a home they can afford—making housing the defining issue of this country’s politics and economics.

High interest rates propelled ownership costs to new summit in the fourth quarter of 2023: A household earning a median income needed to spend a staggering 63.5% of it to cover the costs of owning an average home at market price.

February offered valuable clues on the direction Canada’s housing market is taking. Improving sentiment among buyers and sellers—no doubt stoked by growing expectations

Anyone expecting smooth sailing ahead for the housing market got a reality check in February. Month-to-month drops in home resales in several of Canada’s major markets were a reminder that very challenging affordability conditions

Home resales in Canada increased for the second month in a row in January, rising 3.7% from December. Resales are back up to where they were last summer including the December advance.

January marked the second consecutive month residential transactions increased in major markets across Canada. The uptick seen in early results from local real estate boards was from depressed levels in most cases and did little to alter the generally soft state of affairs in the housing sector (with a few key exceptions). But it suggests […]

Policy action supporting a supply-side boost will be crucial to bringing the market closer to a balance given strong demand side pressures.

Interest rates will continue to dictate the outcome of Canada’s housing market in 2024. We expect slow activity and softening prices in the early part of the year as the Bank of Canada keeps its policy rate high.

Well, 2023 had one last surprise up its sleeve: home resale transactions in Canada bucked the softening trend and rebounded a solid 8.7% m/m in December. What’s more, markets in Ontario and British Columbia—regions that cooled off the most since summer—recorded some of the larger increases. It seems that a combination of price concessions from […]

Mortgage rate increases and modest appreciation in home prices drove up RBC’s aggregate affordability measure for Canada by 2.8 percentage points to 62.5%. (A rise in the measure represents a loss of affordability.) This reversed a modest improvement in the second quarter.

Canada’s housing market downturn spread further in November. Most markets are now in correction mode with high interest rates, the loss of affordability, and mounting economic uncertainty holding back homebuyer demand, and supply-demand conditions having significantly eased since spring. Though home resales (-0.9% m/m) were off just slightly from October in Canada, the lagged impact […]