The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has released its monthly sales statistics and national home sales increased by one per cent from January to February 2015. Greater Vancouver, the Okanagan region, and Greater Toronto led the nation’s sales while over half of other local markets posted declines.
“Sales came in below the ten-year average for the month of February in two-thirds of all local markets,” says Gregory Klump, Chief Economist at CREA. “That said, the opposite was true in a few large urban markets in British Columbia and Ontario despite a shortage of listings there, which is fuelling prices higher.”
The average price of a Canadian home increased by 6.3 per cent on a year-over-year basis in February, to $431,812. However, CREA warns that figures continue to be skewed by the country’s most expensive and active housing markets, Vancouver and Toronto. Markets with the largest annual price increases included, in descending order:
- Greater Toronto (7.84 per cent);
- Greater Vancouver (6.38 per cent); and
- Calgary (5.96 per cent).
When housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver are removed from calculations, the average national price is $326,910, a substantially smaller year-over-year increase of 1.5 per cent.
