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Home sales fell 14% in March as COVID-19 settled in, CREA says
Home sales fell by 14 per cent in March as COVID-19 lockdowns slowed the market to a crawl, the Canadian Real Estate Association says.A pedestrian wearing a mask walks past a real estate sign in Toronto. The coronavirus pandemic put a chill on home sales across the country in March. (Michael Wilson/CBC)Home sales fell by…
Home sales fell by 14 per cent in March as COVID-19 lockdowns slowed the market to a crawl, the Canadian Real Estate Association says.
Home sales fell by 14 per cent in March as COVID-19 lockdowns slowed the market to a crawl, the Canadian Real Estate Association says.
The group that represents 130,000 realtors across the country said Wednesday that the month started out strong but slowed dramatically in the second half, “as the economic turmoil and physical distancing rules surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic caused both buyers and sellers to increasingly retreat to the sidelines.”
Sales were down just about everywhere from February's level, including in the following cities:
- Greater Toronto Area, down 20.8 per cent.
- Montreal, down 13.3 per cent.
- Greater Vancouver area, down 2.9 per cent.
- The Fraser Valley, down 13.6 per cent.
- Calgary, down 26.3 per cent.
- Edmonton, down 13.2 per cent.
- Winnipeg, down 7.3 per cent.
- Hamilton-Burlington, down 24.9 per cent.
- Ottawa, down 7.9 per cent.
“March 2020 will be remembered around the planet for a long time,” CREA president Jason Stephen said. “Canadian home sales and listings were increasing heading into what was expected to be a busy spring [but] after Friday the 13th, everything went sideways.”
CREA's senior economist Shaun Cathcart said the month started out strong and then completely froze in the second half, which threw the overall monthly figure out of whack.
“Preliminary data from the first week of April suggest both sales and new listings were only about half of what would be normal for that time of year,” he said.
On the price side, the average sale price for a home that sold during the month was just over $540,000. That's basically unchanged from the average selling price in February, but it is up by 12.5 per cent compared to the average seen in March of last year.
More to come
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