Canada’s housing market has come racing out of the pandemic lockdowns this spring, setting a third consecutive monthly record for home sales in September.
The association says September home sales were up 45.6 per cent compared with the same month last year. Compared with August, CREA says home sales were up 0.9 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Month-over-month gains in Ottawa, Greater Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Calgary and Hamilton-Burlington, Ont., were mostly offset by declines in the Greater Toronto Area and Montreal.
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The actual national average home price also set another record in September at $604,000, up 17.5 per cent from the same month last year.
CREA says excluding sales in Greater Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, two of the most active and expensive housing markets, lowers the national average price about $125,000.
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“Many Canadian housing markets are continuing to see historically strong levels of activity as we enter into the fall market of this very strange year,” CREA chair Costa Poulopoulos said in a statement.
“Along with historic supply shortages in a number of regions, fierce competition among buyers has been putting upward pressure on home prices. Much of that was pent-up demand from the spring that came forward as our economies
opened back up over the summer.”
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The Ontario Real Estate Board earlier this month requested that open houses be suspended during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many economists who chimed on in the latest CREA numbers said the aggressively strong market can’t continue.
“We doubt that this recent sizzling strength can persist amid some of the building headwinds, which should at least somewhat tame market conditions in the months ahead,” Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter said.
“The underlying economic conditions simply do not support such a piping hot market over a sustained period.”
HuffPost Canada, with files from The Canadian Press
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