West Kelowna Real Estate News!
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Canadian home sales drop sharply in May
CREA NewsOttawa, ON, June 15, 2017 – According to statistics released today by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), national home sales posted a sizeable decline in May 2017.
Highlights:
While May sales were down from the previous month in about half of all local markets, the sizeable national decline largely reflects a 25.3% m-o-m drop in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Activity was also down significantly from the previous month among other housing
markets across the Greater Golden Horseshoe region, including Oakville-Milton, Hamilton-Burlington and Barrie. By contrast, activity rose to multi-year highs in Montreal and Quebec City.
Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down 1.6% on a year-over-year basis in May, with year-over-year (y-o-y) gains in about 60% of all local housing markets offset by the sharp drop in the GTA (20.8% y-o-y). Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal were among a number of urban centres where May sales surpassed year-ago levels.
“Recent changes to housing policy in Ontario have quickly caused sales and listings to become more balanced in the GTA,” said CREA President Andrew Peck. “Meanwhile, the balance between supply and demand in Vancouver is tightening up, while many places elsewhere in Canada remain amply supplied. All real estate is local, and REALTORS® remain your best source for information about sales and listings where you live or might like to.”
“This is the first full month of results since changes to Ontario housing policy made in late April. They provide clear evidence that the changes have resulted in more balanced housing markets throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe region,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist. “For housing markets in the region, May sales activity was down most in the GTA and Oakville. This suggests the changes have squelched speculative home purchases.”
The number of newly listed homes edged up a further 0.3% in May following April’s jump of almost 10%. New listings in May remained high in and around the GTA; however, the York Region of the GTA posted the largest month-over-month decline in new supply. Similar percentage declines were also evident for new listings in Oakville-Milton and Barrie.
With sales down considerably in May, the national sales-to-new listings ratio moved out of sellers’ territory and back into balanced market territory for the first time since late 2015. The ratio stood at 56.3% in May 2017, down from 60.2% in April and the high-60% range over the first three months of this year.
A sales-to-new listings ratio between 40 and 60 is generally consistent with balanced housing market conditions, with readings below and above this range indicating buyers’ and sellers’ markets respectively.
The ratio was above 60% in more than half of all local housing markets in May, the majority of which are located in British Columbia and southwestern Ontario. The ratio is above 70% for Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley and above 60% for Montreal. By contrast, the ratio softened sharply in the GTA, closing out the month at 41%.
The number of months of inventory is another important measure of the balance between housing supply and demand. It represents how long it would take to completely liquidate current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.
There were 4.7 months of inventory on a national basis at the end of May 2017, up from 4.3 months in April and 4.1 months in March. This returns the measure to where it was for much of 2016.
With new listings having surged and sales having declined in some markets within the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the number of months of inventory in the region is up from all-time lows. That said, housing markets in the region remain among the tightest in Canada, with most urban centres in the region still registering less than two months of inventory.
Price gains accelerated for apartment units, which posted the largest y-o-y gains in May (+20.5%). Meanwhile, prices gains braked for benchmark low-rise homes (townhouse/row units: +19.3% y-o-y; two-storey single family homes: +18.4% y-o-y; one-storey single family homes: +14.5% y-o-y).
While benchmark home prices were up from year-ago levels in 11 of 13 housing markets tracked by the MLS® HPI, price trends continued to vary widely by location.
After having dipped in the second half of last year, home prices in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia have been recovering and have either reached new heights or are trending toward them (Greater Vancouver: +8.8% y-o-y; Fraser Valley: +14.7% y-o-y). Meanwhile, y-o-y benchmark home price increases remained in the 20% range in Victoria and elsewhere on Vancouver Island.
Price gains slowed on a y-o-y basis in Greater Toronto and particularly in Oakville-Milton but remain well above year-ago levels (Greater Toronto: +29% y-o-y; Oakville-Milton: +23.9% y-o-y). Price growth remained in the mid-20% on a y-o-y basis in Guelph.
Calgary and Regina traded places in May, with Calgary prices having posted the first y-o-y gain (+0.2%) in almost two years and Regina prices having moved into negative territory (-1.7%) for the first time since January 2016. Saskatoon home prices remained down from year-ago levels (-2.8%) for the 22nd consecutive month.
Benchmark home prices rose by more than the rate of overall consumer price inflation in Ottawa (+4.4% overall, led by a 5.4% increase in two-storey single family home prices), Greater Montreal (+3.6% overall, led by a 4.6% increase in two-storey single family home prices) and Greater Moncton (+6.1% overall, led by a 13.1% increase in prices for townhouse/row units).
The MLS® Home Price Index (MLS® HPI) provides the best way of gauging price trends because average price trends are prone to being strongly distorted by changes in the mix of sales activity from one month to the next.
The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes sold in May 2017 was $530,304, up 4.3% from where it stood one year earlier.
The national average price continues to be pulled upward by sales activity in Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto, which are two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from calculations trims more than $130,000 from the national average price ($398,546).
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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.
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is one of Canada’s largest single-industry trade associations, representing more than 120,000 REALTORS® working through some 90 real estate Boards and Associations.
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
CREA Updates Resale Housing Market Forecast
CREA NewsOttawa, ON, June 15, 2017 – The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has updated its forecast for home sales activity via the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) Systems of Canadian real estate Boards and Associations in 2017 and 2018.
Housing market trends continue to diverge considerably among regions along four general themes: British Columbia, the Greater Golden Horseshoe, oil and natural resource dependent provinces, and everywhere else.
In British Columbia, activity is showing early signs of recovering from last year’s correction in some areas of the province. This suggests home buying sentiment may be starting to improve.
In Ontario, evidence suggests that housing market sentiment has similarly cooled following housing policy changes made by the provincial government in April 2017. Trends for the province are softening, with home sales and price growth in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region slowing.
Sales activity is still running at lower levels, and supply remains elevated, in the natural resource-intensive provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. This has resulted in somewhat softer price trends in the two western provinces and more pronounced price declines in Newfoundland and Labrador. Even so, activity in Alberta has firmed up compared to the low reached in early 2016 and the balance between supply and demand in the province has been tightening. By comparison, the balance between supply and demand in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland is increasingly favouring buyers.
To varying degrees, housing markets in Manitoba, Northern and Eastern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island had a breakout year in 2016, with rising sales drawing down previously elevated levels of supply. So far this year, more balanced market conditions have remained in all of these regions.
Access to financing and affordability for potential home buyers has been reduced by tighter federal regulations announced late last year, together with recent increases in mortgage default insurance premiums and changes to Ontario housing policies. With little more than a month having passed since the provincial changes were announced and implemented, the combined impact of policy changes on home buyer and seller sentiment, sales, listings, and the balance between the two pose potential upside and downside forecast risks.
Nationally, sales activity is forecast to decline by 1.5% to 527,400 units in 2017. This is little changed compared to CREA’s previous forecast at the national level, with an upward revision to the sales forecast for British Columbia offsetting a downward revision to Ontario’s.
Sales in British Columbia are still forecast to decline in 2017 compared to the all-time record in 2016 (-9%). Newfoundland & Labrador is also forecast to see a sizeable decline in sales in 2017 (-11.7%), continuing a softening trend that stretches back nearly a decade. Smaller declines in activity are forecast for Saskatchewan (-4.4%), Ontario ( 2.1%) and Prince Edward Island ( 5.3%).
Alberta is forecast to have the largest increase in activity in 2017 (+10.2%); however, this would still leave sales in the province below its 10-year average.
Elsewhere, sales activity is forecast this year to be little changed from last year’s levels in Manitoba (+0.3%) and Nova Scotia (-0.4%), while activity in Quebec and New Brunswick is projected to increase modestly (+3.6% and +1.9%, respectively).
The national average price is forecast to rise by 7.4% to $526,000 in 2017. Ontario is forecast to post the only large average price gain in 2017 (+16%), which would nonetheless represent a moderation from where it is currently for the year-to-date.
Only Newfoundland and Labrador (-5.4%) and Saskatchewan (-1.6%) are forecast to see average price declines in 2017, in line with historically elevated supply in those two provinces. Average price gains are forecast to be around the 2% to 3% range in most other provinces in 2017.
In 2018, national sales are forecast to number 523,200 units, representing a decline of 0.8% compared to the 2017 forecast. Most of the annual decline is expected to result from fewer sales in British Columbia and Ontario following expected interest rate increases later in the year.
The national average price is forecast to rise by 1.8% to $535,400 in 2018, with an expected gain of about 5% in Ontario balancing a decline of almost 4% in British Columbia. The forecast increase in Ontario reflects an expected calming of home buying sentiment and modest rebound in sales in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region. The expected decline in average price for British Columbia is also in part compositional, with Vancouver sales as a share of provincial activity likely to decline as mortgage interest rates rise.
Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador are projected to see small average price declines in 2018, with home price increases elsewhere forecast to more or less track overall consumer price inflation in 2018.
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About The Canadian Real Estate Association
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is one of Canada’s largest single-industry trade associations, representing more than 120,000 real estate Brokers/agents and salespeople working through more than 90 real estate Boards and Associations.
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
Canadian home sales drop in April
CREA NewsOttawa, ON, May 15, 2017 – According to statistics released today by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), national home sales declined in April 2017.
Highlights:
April sales were down from the previous month in close to two-thirds of all local markets, led by the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and offset by gains in Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down 7.5% year-over-year, with declines in close to 70% of all local markets. Sales were down most in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where activity continues to run well below last year’s record-levels. The GTA also factored in the decline, with faded activity compared to record levels set in April last year.
“Sales in Vancouver are down from record levels in the first half of last year but the gap has started to close,” CREA President Andrew Peck. “Meanwhile, sales are up in Calgary and Edmonton from last year’s lows and trending higher in Ottawa and Montreal. All real estate is local, and REALTORS® remain your best source for information about sales and listings where you live or might like to.”
“Homebuyers and sellers both reacted to the recent Ontario government policy announcement aimed at cooling housing markets in and around Toronto,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist. “The number of new listings in April spiked to record levels in the GTA, Oakville-Milton, Hamilton-Burlington and Kitchener-Waterloo, where there had been a severe supply shortage. And with only ten days to go between the announcement and the end of the month, sales in each of these markets were down from the previous month. It suggests these housing markets have started to cool. Policy makers will no doubt continue to keep a close eye on the combined effect of federal and provincial measures aimed at cooling housing markets of particular concern, while avoiding further regulatory changes that risk producing collateral damage in communities where the housing market is well balanced or already favours buyers.”
The number of newly listed homes jumped 10% in April 2017, led overwhelmingly by a 36% increase in the GTA. Housing markets in the Greater Golden Horseshoe also saw similar percentage increases.
The jump in new listings and drop in sales eased the national sales-to-new listings ratio to 60.1% in April compared to 67.3% in March.
A sales-to-new listings ratio between 40 and 60 is generally consistent with balanced housing market conditions, with readings below and above this range indicating buyers’ and sellers’ markets respectively.
The ratio was above 60% in just over half of all local housing markets in April, mostly in British Columbia and southwestern Ontario. The GTA downshifted into the middle of the balanced range in April, while Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley have returned to sellers’ market territory.
The number of months of inventory is another important measure of the balance between housing supply and demand. It represents how long it would take to completely liquidate current inventories at the current rate of sales activity.
There were 4.2 months of inventory on a national basis at the end of April 2017, up slightly from 4.1 months in March when it fell to its lowest reading in almost a decade.
Although new listings surged in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, inventories remain tight at near or below one month across the region. Ontario’s recent changes to housing policy were announced late in the month, so their full effect on the balance between supply & demand has yet to be determined.
Two-storey single family homes posted the strongest year-over-year price gains (+21.8%), followed closely by townhouse/row units (+19.9%), apartment units (18.8%) and one-storey single family homes (17.2%).
While benchmark home prices were up from year-ago levels in 11 of 13 housing markets tracked by the MLS® HPI, price trends continued to vary widely by location.
After having dipped in the second half of last year, home prices in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia have been recovering, are up from levels one year ago, and are now at new heights or trending toward them (Greater Vancouver: +11.4% y-o-y; Fraser Valley: +18% y-o-y).
Meanwhile, benchmark home price gains remained in the 20% range in Victoria and elsewhere on Vancouver Island. Price gains were in the 30% range in Greater Toronto and Oakville-Milton, and ranged in the mid-20% in Guelph.
By comparison, home prices eased in Calgary (-0.9% y-o-y) and Saskatoon (-2.6% y-o-y) and are now about 5.5% below their peaks reached in 2015.
Home prices were up modestly from year-ago levels in Regina (+0.4% overall, led by a 2% increase in apartment prices), Ottawa (+4% overall, led by a 4.9% increase in two-storey single family home prices), Greater Montreal (+3.7% overall, led by a 5.5% increase in prices for townhouse/row units) and Greater Moncton (+4.8% overall, led by a 12.7% increase in prices for townhouse/row units).
The MLS® Home Price Index (MLS® HPI) provides the best way of gauging price trends because average price trends are prone to being strongly distorted by changes in the mix of sales activity from one month to the next.
The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes sold in April 2017 was $559,317, up 10.4% from where it stood one year earlier.
The national average price continues to be pulled upward by sales activity in Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto, which are two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from calculations trims more than $150,000 from the average price.
– 30 –
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.
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is one of Canada’s largest single-industry trade associations, representing more than 120,000 REALTORS® working through some 90 real estate Boards and Associations.
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