Housing Market Statistics | September 2020
August 2020 another record-setting month for many Canadian housing markets
National Home Sales

Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems rebounded by a further 26% in July 2020, raising them to the highest monthly level ever recorded.

Actual Activity

Actual (not seasonally adjusted) sales activity posted a 33.5% y-o-y gain in August. It was a new record for the month of August, and the sixth-highest monthly sales figure of any month on record. Transactions were up compared to last August in almost all Canadian housing markets.

“ It has been a record-setting summer in many housing markets across Canada as REALTORS® and their clients play catch up following the loss of so much of the 2020 spring market. Many markets dealing with inventory shortages have been seeing fierce competition among buyers this summer; although, that was something that had been anticipated for 2020 prior to COVID-19. "
~ Costa Poulopoulos, Chair of CREA
Newly Listed Homes

The number of newly listed homes posted a further 10.6% gain in August compared to July.

MLS® Price Index

The Aggregate Composite MLS® Home Price Index (MLS® HPI) rose by 1.7% m-o-m in August 2020. Of the 21 markets currently tracked by the index, m-o-m gains were posted everywhere but Victoria and elsewhere on Vancouver Island.

National Average Sale Price

The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average home price set another record in August 2020 at more than $586,000, up 18.5% from the same month last year.

“ It will come as a surprise to many that as of the end of August, home sales in 2020 had fully caught up to where we were at that time last year; however, that is somewhat of a low bar as the first half of 2019 wasn’t really anything to write home about. A more useful comparison would be to ask where are we now versus where we thought we’d be before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, and on that score there is still a lot of catching up to do. ”
~ Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist

The national average price is heavily influenced by sales in Greater Vancouver and the GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets. Excluding these two markets from calculations cuts around $122,000 from the national average price. The extent to which sales continue to fluctuate in these two markets relative to others could have further compositional effects on the national average price going forward, both up and down.