Is a housing market recovery underway?
Home sales increased for the fourth month in a row across Canada in July as buyers continued returning to the market despite ongoing tariff and trade uncertainty.
National sales were up by 3.8% last month compared with June, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said on Friday, and jumped by 6.6% year over year. Home prices remained largely steady over the summer but slipped by 3.4% from a year prior.
That growth was spurred in large part by an uptick in activity in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Sales there have spiked by 17.3% since April, the association said in a press release, although they remain muted by historical standards.
The outlook for the housing market has brightened in recent months despite the ongoing tariff turmoil, which has seen US president Donald Trump threaten fresh levies on Canadian imports, and stubbornly high mortgage rates.
The Bank of Canada has kept rate cuts on ice over the summer, opting not to trim its benchmark rate as it assesses how that trade dispute is impacting the Canadian economy and inflation.
But CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart said the latest sales figures are a positive sign for Canadian housing, even though those trade threats continue to linger. “At the national level, June was pretty close to a carbon copy of May, with sales up about 3% on a month-over-month basis and prices once again holding steady,” he said in the association’s press release.
“It’s another month of data suggesting the anticipated rebound in Canadian housing markets may have only been delayed by a few months, following a chaotic start to the year – although with the latest 35% tariff threat, we’re not out of the woods yet.”
New listings inched slightly lower, falling by 2.9% last month compared with June, pushing the sales-to-new-listings ratio higher – to 50.1%, compared with 47.3% in May.
Still, CREA chair Valérie Paquin highlighted that specific markets are faring better than others. “Most housing markets continued to turn a corner in June, although market conditions still vary considerably depending on where you are in Canada,” she said.
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