Sea­son­ally adjusted activ­ity sets new monthly record

Resale hous­ing activ­ity in Canada’s major real estate mar­kets set a new record in Jan­u­ary 2007 accord­ing to sta­tis­tics released by The Cana­dian Real Estate Association.

Sea­son­ally adjusted MLS home sales in Canada’s major real estate mar­kets totaled 30,359 units in Jan­u­ary 2007. Led by gains in Van­cou­ver, Edmon­ton and Toronto, sea­son­ally adjusted activ­ity rose by 3.4% from Decem­ber 2006 and sur­passed the pre­vi­ous monthly record set in August 2005 by three per cent.

Sea­son­ally adjusted activ­ity set new records in Edmon­ton, Saska­toon, Ottawa and Saint John. Real estate sales also reached their sec­ond high­est monthly level on record in Cal­gary, and their third high­est level on record in Toronto.

Sea­son­ally adjusted MLS res­i­den­tial new list­ings num­bered 48,035 units in Jan­u­ary, up 3.1% from 46,579 units in Decem­ber. The monthly increase resulted largely from an increase in new list­ings in Van­cou­ver and Toronto.

The monthly increase in real estate sales was slightly larger than for new list­ings, which caused the resale hous­ing mar­ket to become slightly tighter in Jan­u­ary com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month. Mar­kets in Toronto and Mon­treal became tighter in Jan­u­ary than in any other month in the past year.

The major mar­ket MLS res­i­den­tial aver­age price in Jan­u­ary rose 11.2% year over year to $299,318. Aver­age price reached its high­est monthly level on record in Cal­gary, Edmon­ton, Saska­toon, Hamilton-Burlington, Lon­don & St. Thomas, and Que­bec City.

“Unsea­son­ably warm weather in some regions may have boosted MLS real estate sales activ­ity in Jan­u­ary,” said Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion Chief Econ­o­mist Gre­gory Klump. “Trans­ac­tions also rose in each of the three pre­vi­ous months. That clearly shows that resale real estate activ­ity con­tin­ues to be sup­ported by the same fac­tors that have boosted the hous­ing mar­ket over the past sev­eral years.”

“Low mort­gage inter­est rates, high employ­ment, ris­ing incomes and upbeat con­sumer sen­ti­ment will keep the real estate mar­ket on a strong foot­ing for the fore­see­able future,” he added.

The increas­ing national aver­age house price is one rea­son why Real­tors have been ask­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to revise the Home Buy­ers‘ Plan, says Alan Ten­nant, Pres­i­dent of The Cana­dian Real Estate Association.

“The Home Buy­ers’ Plan has not been adjusted since 1992 when the plan was cre­ated. Dur­ing the same period, the Con­sumer Price Index climbed by 27%. If the max­i­mum loan avail­able under the HBP were adjusted to account for infla­tion, it would now stand at $25,400,” Alan Ten­nant explained.

The plan cur­rently allows first time home buy­ers to bor­row $20,000 from their RRSP with­out penalty. In its pre­sen­ta­tion to the Finance Com­mit­tee, The Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion pro­posed increas­ing the max­i­mum indi­vid­ual with­drawl to $25,000.

The Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion cau­tions that aver­age price infor­ma­tion can be use­ful in estab­lish­ing trends over time, but does not indi­cate actual prices in cen­tres com­prised of widely diver­gent neigh­bor­hoods or account for price dif­fer­en­tial between geo­graphic areas. Sta­tis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion con­tained in this report includes all hous­ing types.

MLS is a co-operative mar­ket­ing sys­tem used only by Canada’s real estate Boards to ensure max­i­mum expo­sure of prop­er­ties listed for sale.

The Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion is one of Canada’s largest single-industry trade asso­ci­a­tions, rep­re­sent­ing more than 88,000 Real­tors work­ing through 99 real estate Boards, 10 provin­cial Asso­ci­a­tions and one ter­ri­to­r­ial Asso­ci­a­tion. The Cana­dian Real Estate Association’s pri­mary mis­sion is to rep­re­sent mem­bers at the fed­eral level, and to defend the public’s right to own and enjoy property.

This report is pub­lished by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Depart­ment of The Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found at www​.crea​.ca.

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