Canadian real estate prices have yet to budge, but there’s a lot more inventory hitting the market. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data shows new listings surged in July 2024. An army of sellers hit the market last month, sending new listings to grow at more than double the rate of sales. Some of the country’s biggest markets are now seeing double-digit growth, as sellers potentially overestimated the impact of rate cuts stimulating buyers.
Canadian Real Estate Listing Growth Doubled The Rate of Sales
Canadian real estate sellers must have been expecting a lot more activity last month. New listings hit 83,607 homes in July, up 12.7% from last year. The annual growth rate was more than double the 4.8% increase in sales over the same period, generally easing conditions across the country. However, not all markets have seen lofty inventory gains.
Canadian Real Estate Has Seen A Sudden Surge In New Listings
New listings of homes for sale on the MLS by city for July.
Source: CREA; Better Dwelling.
Windsor & Halifax Real Estate Saw The Biggest New Listings Surge
Eastern Canada was home to the most new listing growth. The Windsor-Essex region saw the biggest climb of any major market at 22.9% annual growth in July. It was followed by Trois Rivières CMA ( +21.9%), and Halifax-Dartmouth ( +20.1% ). It’s worth emphasizing that the top three markets all saw new listings increase by a fifth compared to last year.
Most Canadian Real Estate Markets Have Seen Inventory Rise
Annual growth of new listings of homes for sale on the MLS in July.
Source: CREA; Better Dwelling.
Only A Handful of Markets Saw Inventory Tighten
Leading the way for tighter inventory were two small markets, and a fast-growing Ontario city. Saint John (-9%) saw the sharpest contraction of any major market for new listings. It was followed by Saguenay (-7.4%), a relatively small city in Quebec. The exception to the small markets was the fast-growing region of London-St.Thomas, where new listings contracted 2.7% from last year.
Toronto & Vancouver Represented A Quarter of New Listings
Toronto and Vancouver, Canada’s two largest markets, both saw substantial upticks in new listings. Toronto reported 16,296 new listings in July, an increase of 18.8% from last year. The country’s largest real estate markets represented nearly 1 in 5 (19.5%) new listings last month.
In a very distant second was Greater Vancouver, which reported 5,491 new listings in July, up 16.7% from last year. The region was the second largest with 6.6% of monthly listings, highlighting how fast things have begun to loosen in Toronto.
The industry previously believed that rate cuts would kickstart the market. Investors, especially in regions like Toronto, expected this would be the case but unfortunately for them, buyers didn’t get the memo. Economists now see much sharper rate cuts required to stimulate the market, with the earliest impact not expected to materialize until next year. However, households may be in a very different space by next year, considering the rising mortgage delinquencies and erosion in the labor market.
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