{"id":608381,"date":"2026-04-16T17:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608381\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T17:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:04:08","slug":"expected-average-sale-price-lowered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608381\/","title":{"rendered":"Expected average sale price lowered"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Canadian Real Estate Association has downgraded its forecast for home sales activity in 2026<\/a>, while the number of homes across the country sold in March fell 2.3 per cent from a year earlier.<\/p>\n

CREA is now expecting a total of 474,972 residential properties to be sold throughout the year, which would be one per cent more than 2025. But that\u2019s down from its previous forecast in January of 5.1 per cent growth year-over-year.<\/p>\n

The national average home price is forecast to rise 1.5 per cent on an annual basis to $688,955 in 2026, which would be around $10,000 lower than predicted in January.<\/p>\n

In March, the national average sale price fell 0.8 per cent compared with a year earlier to $673,084.<\/p>\n

CREA\u2019s own home price index, which aims to represent the sale of typical homes, edged 0.4 per cent lower between February and March and dropped 4.7 per cent on a year-over-year basis.<\/p>\n

That marked the 14th consecutive monthly decline in the national benchmark house price, leaving it down 20 per cent from the early-2022 peak, noted Oxford Economics senior economist Michael Davenport.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect house prices to continue drifting lower before finding a bottom around mid-year, thanks to a resumption of modest job growth, improved affordability, and fiscal stimulus that will increasingly support demand,\u201d said Davenport in a note.<\/p>\n

However, he said that\u2019s conditional on \u201ca relatively short-lived U.S.\/Israel-Iran war\u201d and a favourable renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a material risk that Canada\u2019s housing slump could persist for longer and lead to a deeper correction in prices,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

CREA said rising global economic uncertainty \u201cpiled on to an already shaky economic start to the year\u201d in March.<\/p>\n

It said its forecast was dampened by higher inflation tied to a spike in oil prices. That has raised the odds of a Bank of Canada rate hike later this year, prompting higher bond yields and resulting in a jump in fixed mortgage rates.<\/p>\n

The association said it expects higher mortgage rates to curtail activity on their own, but the potential for the oil shock to be short lived will likely also cause many buyers to wait for rates to fall before making their move.<\/p>\n

\u201c2026 is still expected to see a modest amount of upward momentum in sales and a stabilization in prices as some pent-up first-time buyer demand enters the market, but the forecast for the year has had to be revised downward,\u201d said CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart in a press release.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing of higher mortgage rates, along with the perception they may be temporary, could keep would-be buyers away at the most active time of year \u2014 April, May, and June \u2014 as they wait for rates to come back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

National home sales were virtually unchanged in March on a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis.<\/p>\n

The number of newly listed properties ticked 0.2 per cent lower month-over-month. A total of 167,524 properties were listed for sale by the end of the month, up one per cent from a year earlier and 10.6 per cent below the long-term average for this time of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada\u2019s resale housing market is stuck in a rut, and it doesn\u2019t look likely to break out of it any time soon,\u201d said Davenport, adding activity moved lower for the fifth consecutive month in March.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to 2027, CREA said it now forecasts national home sales to improve by 2.1 per cent to 485,071. But it cautioned that number could rise above the 500,000 mark if higher interest rates prove unnecessary to fight inflation.<\/p>\n

The national average home price is expected to edge up 0.9 per cent from 2026 to $695,094 next year, subject to an upward revision if the current oil shock and associated inflation end up being short lived.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 16, 2026.<\/p>\n

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian Real Estate Association has downgraded its forecast for home sales activity in 2026, while the number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,1007,46,968],"class_list":["post-608381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-construction","tag-economy","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608381","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=608381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}