Sales of existing homes in Canada sold through the Multiple Listing Service® set new monthly and quarterly records, according to statistics for June just released by the Canadian Real Estate Association.
“The continuation of low interest rates will keep the resale housing market hot over the rest of the summer,” said CREA chief economist Klump.
“Short-term interest rates will begin to inch higher in September but they will still be low and attractive, and do little to derail consumer confidence or the resale housing market. The continuation of low interest rates combined with strong employment will keep resale housing demand high over the rest of the year.”
A seasonally-adjusted total of 42,162 homes traded hands via MLS® in June 2005 which is up four per cent from May. This represents the highest activity level on record for a single month on a national
basis, and also for the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.
Seasonally-adjusted sales activity in June also surpassed the previous national monthly record — set in March 2004 — by 2.5 per cent.
Record sales activity in British Columbia and Alberta helped to push national sales to new quarterly sales records in the second quarter of 2005.
In Manitoba, unit sales in June were 1,109, a slight increase of 0.5 per cent over the previous month, but year-to-date sales increased by 5.8 per cent to 6,635 units.
On a seasonally-adjusted basis, second-quarter national sales totaled 122,895, an increase of 8.2 per cent from the first quarter and 2.9 per cent higher than the previous quarterly record set one year
earlier.
Quarterly sales records were posted in British Columbia, Alberta, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Sales activity for the first six months of 2005 was also running ahead of activity levels posted during the first half of 2004. At 254,676 units, actual home sales in the first half of the year were 0.8 per cent higher than sales in the first half of 2004. Activity in the first six months of 2005 also represents the second-highest level for
seasonally-adjusted sales during any six-month period on record.
Three consecutive solid months for new MLS® residential listings in the second quarter pushed seasonally-adjusted new listings to their second-highest quarterly level on record.
The high number of new listings also pushed actual new listings in the first half of 2005 to their highest level since 1990. New residential listings in the first half of 2005 outpaced those in the first six months in all other years in Alberta, Quebec,
New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
The national MLS® residential average price set a new all-time monthly record,
rising 10.5 per cent year-over-year to $252,913 in June. This represents the strongest gain in average price so far this year, which helped push the second-quarter average residential price to its highest quarterly level on record on a national basis and in all 10 provinces.
In Manitoba, the average price for January to June this year increased to $133,657, a 12.1 per cent increase from the average price of $119,274 one year ago during the same period.
“A bigger increase in new listings than sales caused the market to become slightly more balanced in the first half of 2005 compared to the first six months of 2004,” said Klump.
“Even so, the national MLS® residential average price continued to climb steeply and set new records for the month, quarter and for the period from January to June.”