Canadian real estate buyers are shrugging off the pandemic, as a temporary inconvenience. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data shows prices made a huge increase in July. Not just in known “hot” markets like Toronto, and Montreal either. Substantial monthly increases were seen in almost every real estate market across Canada.
Canadian Real Estate Prices Increased 2.34% Just Last Month
Canadian real estate prices are growing at a breakneck speed, even in cities losing residents. The price of a typical home across Canada reached $637,600 in July, up a whopping 2.34% from the month before. Compared to the same month last year, this is a 7.56% increase. The monthly increase was enough to not just accelerate annual growth, but also bend the curve in an unnatural way.
Canadian Real Estate Benchmark Change
The 12 month change in the unadjusted benchmark price of a home across Canada.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
The annual rate of growth resulted in acceleration of the annual trend, but it’s still somewhat lagging long-term. The 7.56% increase in July is the third consecutive month of acceleration. It’s also the biggest 12-month growth observed since December 2017, at the onset of the massive price rally. That said, the growth is less impressive when looked at over the past 3 years. CREA notes over the past 3 years, prices are up 10.07% – meaning they increased less than 1.5 points per year before this year.
Not One Major Canadian Real Estate Market Dropped
Every single major Canadian real estate market has increased, a trend that should raise an eyebrow or two. Ottawa saw the largest jump with prices increasing 2.99% for the month of July, a massive single month gain. Guelph follows with a slightly smaller 2.97% increase. Montreal had the third biggest increase, with prices rising 2.82% from a month before. The smallest gain was seen in Edmonton, and it was still an unusually large increase at 0.51% higher. When every market sees an increase all at once, it has more to do with credit conditions than local fundamentals.
Canadian Real Estate Benchmark Price Change
The seasonally adjusted monthly price change for Canadian real estate markets.
Source: CREA, Better Dwelling.
Two of the largest markets in the country made big gains, but weren’t at either extreme of the market. Toronto real estate prices increased a whopping 2.73% in July, bringing the increase to 10.11% compared to last year. Vancouver saw a smaller, but still large, 0.72% increase, bringing the gains to 4.83% from last year. The single month was nearly a quarter of both market’s gains over the past year.
Prices Increased More This Year, Than The Previous Two In Key Markets
The massive increases this year represents a significant portion of gains made over the past 3 years. Montreal real estate prices are up 14.04% in July, compared to last year — making up almost half of the 29.21% increase made over the past year. Toronto’s 10.11% increase over the past 12-months, contrasts with a 14.51% increase over the past 3 years. In Vancouver, prices increased 4.83% over the past 12-months, but just 1.61% over the past 3 years. For Toronto, this means the past year has seen growth twice as fast as the previous two years. In Vancouver, this year’s growth is much higher than it has been growing over the past 3 years.
Canadian Real Estate Benchmark Price Change
The seasonally adjusted annual price change for Canadian real estate markets, compared to the 3-year change. You can visit the usajrealty.com website to find more information related to the real estate market.
Generally, Canada is seeing robust price growth right across the country. This comes even as indicators like employment, rental rates, and immigration fall. When prices rise across the board despite a breakdown of these indicators, it’s almost certainly a result of too much easy credit.
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Location, location, location.
What location?
All of them. There’s no more room in the country.
How the city suburb gap goes in a bubble. Same prices for a house in the city as the suburbs, just slightly larger. It’s no longer about price comparison, but preference. That’s disregard for land value, which represents most of a home price in expensive cities.
Yeah forget about agglomeration economies we need less density, more urban sprawl and less economic growth.
When this happens, how are Canadians not interested in why every market is rising? It’s clearly the Bank of Canada manipulating things.
Identical to what’s happening in the US. Normally they let the recession happen, then they give stimulus when insolvencies stop falling. Instead what they did was they paid everyone’s bills with the PPP, $600/week unemployment, and $1,200 stimulus checks.
Now there’s going to be governments paying everyone’s bills (Boomers need this, because they mostly only have housing wealth), or the recovery in reverse – where there’s a stimulus support tantrum.
It’s going to be a shock, but Canada didn’t even give as much stimulus as there was in the US. They have CERB, which is $500/week, so about $400/month less, plus in Canadian dollars. No $1,200 stimulus check, and the PPP plan was fewer dollars with a more difficult qualifying criteria.
Almost all of the gas they pumped was just CERB and cheaper mortgages. That’s why the Canadian dollar is doing so well against the USD.
This is the classic description of a melt-up. At this point, everybody is piling in, aided and abetted by the government, the central bank and the retail banking oligopoly.
There is nothing rational about what is going on, and the only question is whether there is enough ink in the printers to inflate everybody’s way out of the mess. There will be big winners and losers, and if history is ant lesson, the poor suckers who are piling in now will be left holding the bag, and the banks will get even richer cleaning up the scraps. Either way, they always win.
Good luck, Canada.
Guys come on, what did you expect would happen? The corrupt government allowing real estate prices to fall?
The government is corrupt and in bed with real estate industry. Who is going to stop them from grinding up young Canadians and feeding them to boomers?
Young Canadians dont even realize whats happening to them. They pay high taxes to give boomers free health care, go heavily in debt (just for a place to live ) to feed boomer blood real estate wealth. By the time they get old the government will cancel health care becuase they went into too much debt to prop up boomer wealth. The US had the common sense to let housing prices fall in 2008, Canadian government actually have the balls to keep propping up real estate prices and coin that a success.
If the victims (young Canadians) dont even understand crime is being committed against them how are they going to fight back? If the victims dont even fight back who will stop the government from screwing them?
They are sucking the blood out of young families through high taxation and real estate bubble and transferring it to the old. Sad to be a young Canadian, the government dont care about you. Time to start a movement to cleanse this real estate disease off our backs.
Time to make government work for us, not vested interest. Time to fight back guys, there is no future for young people in this country.
First chart “Canadian Real Estate Benchmark Price Change” has TWO places named Ottawa with differ numbers.
Do we have TWO Ottawa in Canada?
LOL maybe one Ottawa is where Trudeau lives and the other Ottawa the rest. kinda like the Vatican and Rome but good catch I am sure this will be corrected with next post
lol, that clearly shows how manipulated and inaccurate these statics are