{"id":542520,"date":"2026-03-17T15:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/542520\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:03:10","slug":"home-sales-fall-further-in-february-as-mortgage-rates-and-relentless-weather-weigh-on-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/542520\/","title":{"rendered":"Home sales fall further in February as mortgage rates and \u2018relentless\u2019 weather weigh on market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Home sale activity began to pick up near the end of February, said Canadian Real Estate Association senior economist Shaun Cathcart.Richard Buchan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Canadian home sales fell further in February from multiyear lows in January<\/a>, as steep fixed mortgage rates and persistently bitter weather exacerbated a soft market.<\/p>\n

Home sales across the country fell 1.3 per cent on a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, according to data released Tuesday by the Canadian Real Estate Association, while new listings of homes declined 3.9 per cent. Sales were down 8.1 per cent in February compared to the same month last year. <\/p>\n

The MLS Home Price Index also dipped 0.6 per cent month-over-month and was down 4.8 per cent on a year-over-year basis, CREA reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 4 per cent fixed mortgage rate is higher than what most people have been getting for 15 years, so affordability is tough,\u201d CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart said in an interview. <\/p>\n

The week\u2019s best fixed and variable mortgage rates<\/a><\/p>\n

The general trend across Canada is that home prices are flat, Royal LePage chief executive officer Phil Soper said, adding that last month\u2019s dip in home sales is \u201cmore of the same\u201d landscape the real estate<\/a> industry has been weathering for around two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to expect an adaptation to the new normal,\u201d Mr. Soper said, adding interest rates and buyer behaviour have stayed predictable.<\/p>\n

Typically, cold weather wouldn\u2019t change a market for more than a month, but this year\u2019s storms are \u201crelentless,\u201d hitting the Ontario and Quebec markets hard, Mr. Soper said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the most heavily populated areas of the country, it\u2019s been a really aggressively cold and snowy start to 2026,\u201d Mr. Soper said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cathcart said sellers were forced to make concessions to close sales during the frigid period. <\/p>\n

Home sale activity began to pick up a bit of speed near the end of the month, with listings and sales in the third and fourth weeks of February \u201cmaking up for lost time,\u201d Mr. Cathcart added. <\/p>\n

February\u2019s dip is akin to the market slowdown at the beginning of 2025, when tariff threats prompted price weakness and unfavourable market conditions, Mr. Cathcart said. He expects this soft patch to relent in a similar fashion this year, adding that sectoral tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump have had a less severe impact on the national economy than earlier blanket tariffs.<\/p>\n

Bank of Canada expected to hold rates amid oil-driven inflation risk<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Soper said regional trends \u201care the real story in the national home sales picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the country is treading water,\u201d Mr. Soper said referring to the flat market, noting there has been slippage in the Greater Vancouver Area and some strength in the GTA early in March.<\/p>\n

Mr. Soper said that aside from condo markets in Toronto and Vancouver, realtors are not watching homes linger on the market for months at a time. However, there are \u201ccertainly more homes being listed and then pulled.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Cathcart said observers may be surprised to see some Canadian locales with \u201crip-roaring hot\u201d markets, including Sudbury, Ont., Quebec City and Moncton, N.B. He added thriving markets are becoming \u201cfewer and farther between\u201d in the country as the record-level population increases that were driving price growth taper off.<\/p>\n

Young people are leaving Toronto\u2019s soft market en masse, Mr. Cathcart said, looking to the Prairies and the East Coast for more affordable options.<\/p>\n

A story of affordability: How Canada\u2019s housing market shifted in 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

On the sidelines of the housing market, more young Canadians are renting for longer<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Cathcart added that buyers are hesitant to flood back into the market as prices are still dropping in parts of British Columbia and Ontario. <\/p>\n

\u201cPrices will stabilize when the market picks up,\u201d Mr. Cathcart added. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a chicken-egg problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Toronto, \u201cYou\u2019ve got a ton of first-time buyers who are stuck between units that are either too small or too expensive,\u201d Mr. Cathcart said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been locked out of the market for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of it as a water behind the dam issue that\u2019s going to play out at some point \u2013 and it\u2019s probably just around the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Home sale activity began to pick up near the end of February, said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,43,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,41,39,42,40,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-542520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}