March home sales and new listings ease back following surge in February

Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems fell back 5.4% between February and March 2022. The decline puts activity back in line with where it had been since last fall.

Sales were down in about half of local markets in March, led by declines in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Calgary.

The actual (not seasonally adjusted) number of transactions in March 2022 came in 16.3% below the all-time record set in March 2021. That said, as has been the case since last summer, it remains the second-highest level on record for that month.

“While the market remains historically very active, March definitely saw a slowdown compared to February in terms of both activity and price growth,” said Jill Oudil, Chair of CREA. “One month does not make a trend, so we’ll have to wait and see if this is the beginning of the long-awaited cooling off of this market. Your best bet is to contact your local REALTOR®, as they have the information, knowledge and guidance you’ll need if you are planning on entering the market in 2022,” continued Oudil.

“It was good to see a moderation in the housing markets in March, given so many observers were dreading another year of price gains like we saw 2021,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist. “There were a number of measures announced in the federal budget to help aspiring home buyers, the biggest being getting more housing built. That is the obvious long-term solution to this issue because we all need to live somewhere. In the near-term, the Bank of Canada will do the heavy lifting in the months ahead to slow things down on the price side. Unfortunately, that won’t really do anything to help affordability. Quite the opposite in fact.”

The number of newly listed homes fell back by 5.5% on a month-over-month basis in March following a jump in February. The monthly decline was led by Greater Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Calgary and the GTA.

With sales and new listings falling in equal measure in March, the sales-to-new listings ratio stayed at 75.3% compared to 75.2% in February. The long-term average for the national sales-to-new listings ratio is 55.1%.

About two-thirds of local markets were seller’s markets based on the sales-to-new listings ratio being more than one standard deviation above its long-term mean in March 2022. The other third of local markets were in balanced market territory.

There were 1.8 months of inventory on a national basis at the end of March 2022 — up from a record-low of just 1.6 months in the previous three months. The long-term average for this measure is more than five months.

The Aggregate Composite MLS® HPI was up 1% on a month-over-month basis in March 2022 – a marked slowdown from the record 3.5% increase in February.

The non-seasonally adjusted Aggregate Composite MLS® HPI was up by 27.1% on a year-over-year basis in March.

The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average home price was $796,000 in March 2022, up 11.2% from the same month last year. The national average price is heavily influenced by sales in Greater Vancouver and the GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from the calculation in March 2022 cuts $163,000 from the national average price.

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PLEASE NOTE: The information contained in this news release combines both major market and national sales information from MLS® Systems from the previous month.

CREA cautions that average price information can be useful in establishing trends over time, but does not indicate actual prices in centres comprised of widely divergent neighbourhoods or account for price differential between geographic areas. Statistical information contained in this report includes all housing types.

MLS® Systems are co-operative marketing systems used only by Canada’s real estate Boards to ensure maximum exposure of properties listed for sale.

About The Canadian Real Estate Association

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is one of Canada’s largest single-industry associations. CREA works on behalf of more than 150,000 REALTORS® who contribute to the economic and social well-being of communities across Canada. Together they advocate for property owners, buyers, and sellers.

Further information can be found at http://crea.ca/statistics.

For more information, please contact:

Pierre Leduc, Media Relations
The Canadian Real Estate Association
Tel.: 613-237-7111 or 613-884-1460
E-mail: pleduc@crea.ca