A Deeper Dive into CREA's 2025 Housing Market Forecast

While data tells a story, context helps bring it to life. 

Earlier this month, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) released its resale housing market forecast for 2025 and 2026, anticipating a busy market—starting as early as this spring—as buyers are expected to move off the sidelines. 

To unpack the latest housing market forecast, Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Director and Senior Economist, Housing Data and Market Analysis, joins the REAL TIME podcast with host Shaun Majumder to break down the numbers, discuss what’s happening in different regions of the country, and how advances in housing technologies could help address housing supply shortages in Canada.

How forecasting works

Cathcart starts off by clarifying the art of being an economist, and what forecasting truly is. “Best forecasting advice is the further you go out, the bigger your error term gets,” he says. “We typically, as is a practice around the forecasting world, forecast for the current year out to the end of that and then the next one.” 

He stresses that the focus should be on the current year, as it provides the most reliable information. By comparing it to the past decade or even longer, you can add context—an essential element of an accurate forecast. 

What’s the forecast? 

Cathcart starts off by taking a national approach. Here’s the breakdown of where we’ve been: 

• Home sales are low due to an inflation crisis.
• Prices went up during the pandemic, then interest rates went up.
• A lot of people are unable to borrow the amount of money needed to buy a home. 

What does that mean? A quiet market. “I called it a market in hibernation,” Cathcart says. 

Cathcart notes that CREA’s latest forecast expects the market to wake up this spring; citing evidence he’s already seen in parts of the country. 

• Sales side: good increases, but still a few years away from being on track for “normal”.
• Price side: some gains, due to an ongoing housing supply crisis in Canada. 

“If we can be the country that starts to solve it and is an example for all those other ones, I think that'd be a really cool thing to be a part of.” 

– Shaun Cathcart 

What’s going to get buyers off the sidelines? 

According to Cathcart, that’s going to be when the Bank of Canada signals that they’re done with interest rate cuts, “because Canadians typically are risk-averse”. 

“After years of record population growth and all these people waiting on the sidelines and looking for these particular things that are all going to happen all at the same time, that's why I think our forecast is conservative,” he continues. “I think we could see, actually, a real explosion of activity this spring.” 

Listen to the full conversation between Cathcart and Majumder as they bring life to the data wherever you listen to podcasts or watch on YouTube.