Canada's Home Prices Broke Records Once Again & Two Cities Are Pretty Much To Blame

Once again, Canada's home prices have broken records when it comes to how expensive costs are and two cities are partly to blame for the high national average.

New statistics released by the Canadian Real Estate Association(CREA) on March 15 revealed that national home sales were up in February 2022 and so were home prices.

According to the data, national home sales rose by 4.6% on a month-over-month basis in February. Also, the actual, not seasonally adjusted national average sale price had a 20.6% year-over-year gain in February.

"Ideally, listings will continue to come out in big numbers in the months ahead. Combined with higher interest rates and higher prices, we could be at a turning point where price growth begins to slow down and inventories finally begin to recover after seven years of declines," said Shaun Cathcart, the CREA's senior economist, in a statement.

The actual, not seasonally adjusted national average home price was a record-breaking $816,720 in February, marking a more than 20% difference from that same month in 2021.

Canada's national average price is "heavily influenced" by sales in Greater Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, according to the CREA.

Those are two of the most active and most expensive housing markets in the country.

If Greater Vancouver and the GTA were excluded from the CREA's statistics for February, the national average home price would drop by almost $178,000!

This was also the case in January 2022. For that month, the CREA reported that the national average home price reached $748,450, which was record-breaking back then as well.

In January 2022, if Greater Vancouver and the GTA were excluded, almost $160,000 would've been cut from the national average price.