Canadian Real Estate Sales Drop Over 11%, BC Home To Biggest Declines

Canadian real estate sales are slowing in the country’s biggest markets. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) numbers show June 2018 saw large declines compared to last year. Most of Canada’s major markets faced declines, but British Columbia bared the brunt of them.

Canadian Real Estate Sales Drop Over 11%

Canadian real estate sales are still down bigly from last year. CREA reported 47,413 sales in June, down 6.37% from the month before. This represents an 11.12% decline compared to the same month last year. The monthly drop is fairly normal, but the decline from last year isn’t. Over the past five years, the annual numbers have only dropped twice – this year, and last year.

Canadian Real Estate Sales

The unadjusted sales of all types of homes, as reported through the Canadian MLS.

Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.

Quebec and Toronto Real Estate Lead With Minor Gains

The markets making the biggest gains were in Quebec and Ontario. Quebec City came in at 546 sales in June, up 3.61% from last year. Toronto reported 8,082 sales in June, up 1.35% compared to last year (which is half what TREB reported themselves). Montreal reported 4,081 sales, up just a teensy 0.64%. Yup, those are the country’s leaders rights now.

Canadian Real Estate Sales By Market

Canadian real estate sales in markets with more than 500 sales.

Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.

British Columbia’s Real Estate Markets Lead For Sales Declines

British Columbia is home to the biggest declines in sales across Canada. Fraser Valley reported 1,380 sales in June, a 44.11% decline from last year. Vancouver came in at 2,467 sales, a 37.59% decline from last year. Victoria reported 678 sales, a 29.52% decline from last year. The industry is blaming a policy measure that cracks down on second homes, but seriously? We thought the industry was saying there’s no empty homes in BC? Strange that it would be so impactful.

Canadian Real Estate Sales By Market – June 2018

The percent change in Canadian real estate sales, in markets with more than 500 sales.

Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
Canadian real estate sales are showing minor improvements on a national level. The declines are getting smaller, but they’re still declines. Rising interest rates, policy measures, and availability of credit aren’t short-term issues. They’ll likely persist until a change in the macro environment – good or bad.

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15 Comments

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  • Ippy 6 years ago

    Volume leads price changes. Big movements lead to big changes. That doesn’t look good for Vancouver.

  • AgentX 6 years ago

    Why you can’t trust the news on real estate. Bloomberg/Financial Post wrote:

    “Toronto’s 17% surge leads Canada’s biggest gain in home sales this year”

    Not the case, they used adjusted not *actual* numbers. Keep up the good work, honest agents love your work. You can’t even trust your own boards any more.

    https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/crea-reports-june-home-sales-down-10-7-from-year-ago-but-up-from-may

  • bb 6 years ago

    Could some of the increases seen in Toronto be from money that would have otherwise gone to Vancouver? Perhaps international buyers are moving their chips to a region with politicos are less likely to clamp down.

    • Cash 6 years ago

      Lol. If foreign buyers aren’t buying in Australia and Vancouver, you can rest assured they arent buying in the Big Stank (aka Toronto)

    • Bluetheimpala 6 years ago

      No

    • @xelan_gta 6 years ago

      Don’t be fooled by June 2018 YoY sales growth in Toronto.
      June 2017 was a disaster in regards to number of sales so comparing to 2017 crash we are doing a little bit better, but it can hardly called a rebound.

  • Bluetheimpala 6 years ago

    yummm…can you taste it pa’, can ya taste it? Yeah son, that’s some good shit slurry; give me another hit. BC is going to burn. It started out there and come to a disastrous end out there. If you think the price appreciation in, ya know, the economic driver of CANADA was insane it doesn’t take a genius to realize it is a complete fugazi out there. $800K to $4M in a matter of years…I guess they have nicer weather. BD4L.

    • Grizzly Gus 6 years ago

      BC will be ground zero for sure. Beat GTA on pretty much every bearish metric. % of economy tied to RE, household debt, household prices, lower average income etc. I still think it will be interesting to see what the foreign money from capital control countries does. If debts go sideways back home do they liquidate foreign holdings (BC homes for example), or do they flee their home country? How much of this is real money vs more debt? Ghost collateral, CIBC Foreigner Ninja loans, HELOCS from their own housing bubble, money laundering. Could get ugly.

      Combine this with the fact that most locals in BC think that their city is where every rich person in the world wants to be and will always be the place where they want to be………. could get ugly.

      • vnm 6 years ago

        “Suicide is a sad reality in California. Even in quaint, secluded Marin County, multiple suicides occur each year. In fact, the local suicide rate is well above the state average. ”

        The wealthiest communities in N.A. e.g. Sausalito generally have the highest suicide rates.
        Personally I’d rather save the moving expenses and killing myself before moving to the money hellhole that Vancouver has become, but of course different strokes for different folks.

        So true he number of moving parts and uncertainties in this worldwide asset clusterfukk are crazy!
        Will worries about Chinese currency devaluation chase more investor money into foreign markets like Canada, as some analysts suggest, or will a collapsing RE market and falling dollar kibosh it? And if the dollar doesn’t fall, it’s because interest rates are being jacked up to protect it. Either way the outlook for making money investing in Toronto and Vancouver is extremely bleak.
        The water is just starting to drip on this wicked witch, after the deluge all that will be left is a dark puddle and faint echoes of shrieks and screams.

        • vnm 6 years ago

          Oops. Didn’t mean to be doubly negative. In no way meant to criticize Vancouver the city/residents in any way, just the current RE market cost nightmare.

      • backwardsevolution 6 years ago

        Grizzly Gus – “How much of this is real money vs more debt? Ghost collateral, CIBC Foreigner Ninja loans, HELOCS from their own housing bubble, money laundering. Could get ugly.”

        Real money vs debt – you hit the nail on the head. One giant big Ponzi scheme. They will flee to their home country.

  • Sue 6 years ago

    just looks like the usual summer slowdown. i’m sure it’ll rebound….always does…

  • B.C.Guy 6 years ago

    Well I live in crazy-ass British Columbia, the land of massive home price increases with no economic ties to explain it.

    Try to talk to anyone who hasn’t lived through the recession of the 80’s and they just keep repeating like robots “Foreign Money, Asian Money, Real Estate Always Goes Up, People selling in Vancouver and moving inland”

    How about some numbers?
    A)25 percent of our Provincial economy is tied to Real Estate! YES! 18 percent real estate, 7 percent construction.
    A slight change in the market and you have a MASSIVE part of our economy disappear and with it, home prices plunge.

    B)Another number? 1.5 percent. The National interest rate. How can anyone possibly think we’re in any kind of realistic market with that low of an interest rate?

    C)All-time high Canadian debt NOT INCLUDING HOUSE MORTGAGE. Its not like we’re house poor, we’re just poor. Buy buy buy and pay it back later.

    D) Fraud: We have evidence of Harper’s former govt letting immigrants in if they had a certain amount of money. We have evidence of immigrant who were allowed into the country if they moved to Quebec, which they did temporarily, and then quickly moved to BC.
    Provincially we had a govt look the other way from illegal money being cleaned in casinos, to all kinds of shady “foreign” money being parked in speculative housing with no one living or paying taxes in the occupied dwelling and then selling to the next ponzi victim.

    Most of this has been cleaned up or is in the process of being cleaned up. We also have evidence of China putting tighter and tighter controls from 2015 onwards on the money flowing out of the country.

    E) We have the NDP in power, aka “The Economy Killers”.

    Things are still silly but there’s evidence of a slow down. This will be a bubble that pops, not a “soft-landing”. Many will lose their houses. Especially in areas outside of Vancouver-Victoria.

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