21 August 2018

At the same time, the activity in Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal remained unchanged, and Calgary showed a decline. However, in Hogue’s opinion, such weak results may be caused not by a lack of demand.

“Buyers may be not responsible for the low activity in July,” – he says. “In many cases, the reason could be a decline in sellers. Strong decreases of new listings across Canada made it even more difficult for buyers to find the property they were looking for”.

In addition to it, the regions with growing listings also showed sales increases, especially Ontario.

“Where new listings were up (e.g. the GTA, Hamilton, Windsor and Regina), resales also rose. In our opinion, potential sellers will enter the market once they see more signs of a recovering market”, – he adds.

In terms of home prices, Hogue expects slight growth in the nearest future, but no returning to the record high levels of the last spring.

“The price growth seen last month is hardly a sign of the future return to overheated conditions,” – he says. “We believe the GTA prices, which are the main driver of the national acceleration, have a limited room for rising in order to keep the material gains.”