Home sales edge up

National home sales edged up slightly on a month-over-month basis in June, with sales up a little over half of all local markets, says the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). The actual (not seasonally adjusted) number of transactions came in 4.7% above June 2022. This was the largest year-over-year national sales increase in two years. “With sales levelling off near historically average levels and new listings finally starting to play catch up, housing markets appear to be settling down,” says Shaun Cathcart, CREA's senior economist. “History suggests the price side of things will respond to this with only a slight lag. Add to that the recent Bank of Canada rate hikes, and we can probably expect price growth to moderate in the months ahead, likely still with some degree of upward pressure, but less than in the last three months.” The number of newly listed homes was up 5.9% on a month-over-month basis in June. Building on gains of 3.1% in April and 7.6% in May, new listings have gone from a 20-year low in March to closer to (but still below) average heading into the summer. With new listings outperforming sales in June, the sales-to-new listings ratio eased to 63.6% compared to 66.4% in May and a recent peak of 68.3% in April. That said, the measure remains well above the long-term average for the measure of 55.2%.