174 units properties sold in March 2024 – that is a staggering 24.7% fewer sales than March 2023. Meanwhile the number of active listings available on the market 1,063, an increase of 25.4%.
The decrease in sales and increase in inventory was seen across the entire Thompson Nicola Okanagan region with overall sales down -22.0% and listings up 34.1%.
CANADIAN NEWS
From Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) – here is a summary of their updated forecast for home sales activity and average home prices.
National home sales have remained little changed from month to month since the summer of 2022 and have gained back-to-back in February and March 2023. With nearly a year without any large declines, the downward adjustment to sales activity from rising interest rates and high uncertainty looks to be behind us,
Some buyers are expected to emerge back into the housing market, after waiting for added certainty around mortgage payments and property value – two important signals that could be here.
One the Bank of Canada pausing interest rate hikes with no increases in March or April and second, as housing markets have been tightening to begin the year, it looks as though home prices, which had been declining steadily since last March, have also now levelled out.
Risks to this forecast include:
- a worsening of Canada’s housing supply issue faced across the entire continuum including in the existing home market. New listings have been dropping fast and are currently at 20-year lows (a downside for the sales forecast and an upside risk to the average price forecast); and
- whether an expected short and mild recession in the middle of 2023 turns out to be more severe and longer lasting than anticipated.
National home sales are forecast to rise 13.9% to 561,090 units in 2024 as housing markets continue to return towards trend, and monetary policy moves towards a more neutral stance. This forecast would still leave activity well below the 2021 record, but it would lift it back in line with the long-term trend and place it back above the 10-year average. The national average home price is forecast to recover by 4.7% from 2023 to 2024 to around $702,200, putting it on par with 2022.
A final note on average home prices: many of the forecast increases and declines in provincial average prices for 2023 and 2024 are more an echo of the volatility seen last year – the heights of the peaks reached in early 2022, the depths of the troughs in some cases not reached yet, and the extent to which a recovery is already on in some parts of the country. In other words, probably a pretty low signal to noise ratio until we get into forecasting 2025.
Leave a Reply