Lak­shine Sathiyanathan, CityNews​.ca

The resale hous­ing mar­ket in Canada held rel­a­tively steady in August for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive month, accord­ing to a report by the Cana­dian Real Estate Association.

The real estate body said in its report that home sales posted a big gain in com­par­i­son to last year, even with steady home sales in August com­pared with July.

For the first time this year, year-to-date sales have trumped 2010 lev­els but remain in line with the 10-year aver­age, accord­ing to the association.

Toronto and Ottawa saw a monthly increase in activ­ity while Cal­gary, Mon­treal and Van­cou­ver saw activ­ity some­what decline.

The num­ber of newly listed homes was lit­tle changed from July to August, keep­ing “the national hous­ing mar­ket firmly planted in bal­anced ter­ri­tory,” the CREA said.

The national sales to new list­ings ratio, a mea­sure of mar­ket bal­ance, the CREA said, was 51.6% in August, unchanged com­pared with July.

As a result, the resale hous­ing inven­tory, the num­ber of months it would take to sell all homes at the cur­rent sales activ­ity level, was 6.2 months at the end of August for the coun­try. This is lit­tle changed from 6.1 months at the end of July, and has remained sta­ble since April.

The CREA said there were more bal­anced local mar­kets in Canada in August than at any other time on record.

In August, the Toronto Stock Exchange and major mar­kets suf­fered steep losses and whether it would affect Cana­dian hous­ing sales was unknown.

“The hous­ing mar­ket in Canada remained on a firm foot­ing in August when com­pared to volatile finan­cial mar­kets,” CREA pres­i­dent Gary Morse said in a release.

“Through their actions, home­buy­ers are show­ing that they remain con­fi­dent about the sta­bil­ity of the Cana­dian hous­ing mar­ket, and rec­og­nize that the con­tin­u­a­tion of low inter­est rates rep­re­sents an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to buy their first home or trade up.”

Accord­ing to the CREA, actual August sales – those not sea­son­ally adjusted – were 15.8% above national lev­els recorded last year, mak­ing it the largest year-over-year increase since last April.

So far, 324,030 homes were sold using the CREA’s Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice this year.

———————————————————————————————————————
Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
———————————————————————————————————————

Related posts:

1. Canada Hous­ing Resales Rise 4.1% in August List­ings are going down, while sales go up. Prices are…
2. Resale hous­ing mar­ket on solid ground in Novem­ber National resale hous­ing activ­ity con­tin­ues its return to nor­mal levels,…
3. Cana­dian prop­erty mar­ket declared sta­ble and steady Res­i­den­tial prop­erty sales in Canada are steady with the latest…
4. Cana­dian hous­ing mar­ket immune to global tur­moil in August, CREA finds The global eco­nomic tur­moil that roiled stock mar­kets around the…
5. GTA REALTORS Report August Resale Mar­ket Fig­ures Greater Toronto REALTORS reported 7,542 sales through the Toron­toMLS system…