August brought a fifth-straight gain in national home selling activity, with the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reporting a 1.1% bump in transactions in its latest statistics package, released Monday morning. Although a 1% uptick is nothing to write home about, it marks “the best month of August for sales since 2021” and contributes to a cumulative 12.5% rise since March, CREA said.
While recent months’ gains were “led overwhelmingly” by the Greater Toronto Area, according to the national association, August’s activity was driven by sales in Montreal and Ottawa — and to a lesser degree, Greater Vancouver.
For instance, across the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), 3,330 homes traded hands in the month, marking a 12% increase year over year. Ottawa saw a similar annual rise of 12.1%, with 1,318 units sold. Over in Greater Vancouver, 1,959 homes were sold — up 2.9% from August 2024.
“Activity has continued to gradually pick up steam over the last five months, but the experience from a year ago suggests that trend could accelerate this fall,” CREA’s Senior Economist Shaun Cathcart said in a press release.
“Part of what drives sales at different points in the year is the availability of a lot of fresh property listings for buyers to buy. For the fall market, that always happens right at the beginning of September, and this year was no exception,” Cathcart added. “If last year is any kind of guide, then there is the potential that sales could really pick up in the next month or so depending on how many buyers are drawn off the sidelines, particularly if we see a September rate cut by the Bank of Canada.”
CREA has also reported a 2.6% month-over-month rise in new supply last month, and combined with the bump in sales, the national sales-to-new listings ratio eased to 51.2%. The metric is down from 52% in July, and is at its lowest level since March.
“The long-term average for the national sales-to-new listings ratio is 54.9%, with readings roughly between 45% and 65% generally consistent with balanced housing market conditions,” the report notes.
Meanwhile, with 195,453 active listings recorded by the end of August, months of inventory came in at 4.4, which is the lowest the metric has been since January. In addition, since CREA considered market balance around five months of inventory, August’s measure indicates that the market has edged in the direction of a sellers’ market, which is anything below 3.6 months.
On the price front, the national composite home price index was little changed, with a mere 0.1% drop recorded month over month. “Following declines in the first quarter of the year, the national benchmark price has been mostly stable since April,” CREA said.
The Association additionally reported that, on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis, the index was down 3.4% year over year. The declines are anticipated to “continue to shrink” in the months ahead. Also not seasonally adjusted, the national average home price, at $664,078, was a 1.8% rise over August 2024.
