Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS systems rebounded by a record 56.9 per cent in
May although, that is as a percentage of the weakest month of April on record, reported the Canadian Real Estate Association on Monday.
“As such, the May gain constituted a return of only a third of the activity lost between February and April, and the May 2020 sales figure was still the lowest level for that month since the mid-1990s,” it explained.
CREA said transactions were up on a month-over-month basis across the country. Among Canada’s
largest markets, sales rose by 53 per cent in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), 92.3 per cent in
Montreal, 31.5 per cent in Greater Vancouver, 20.5 per cent in the Fraser Valley, 68.7 per cent in Calgary,
46.5 per cent in Edmonton, 45.6 per cent in Winnipeg, 69.4 per cent in Hamilton-Burlington and
30.5 per cent in Ottawa.
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“In most cases, the sizes of the increases listed above were somewhat proportional to the size of declines recorded in April, and because it requires exponentially larger increases to recover from larger declines, some of the markets with the smaller gains in May but also smaller declines in April are currently doing better relative to history, it said, adding that sales activity was still running 39.8 per cent below last May, marking the lowest May sales figure since 1996.
“May’s housing numbers are certainly a mixed bag of results – sales and new listings are both way up month-over-month but still way down compared to year ago,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist, in a news release. “The big picture is things are moving in the right direction but still have a long way to go. That said, under the surface those numbers have been steadily rising from mid-April right through the first week of June, so June may end up a similar story.
“With sales and new listings moving down and now back up in tandem, and overall supply still falling, prices appear to be holding firm at this point.”
Robert Kavcic, Senior Economist, with BMO, said housing markets began to slowly re-open across Canada in May.
“At this point, it’s still too early to judge the ultimate impact on prices, given both sales and listings have been shut in. It’s entirely possible that, at least in some of the stronger pre-COVID markets, listings get snapped up quickly when they start to come back online more substantially, leaving less of near-term impact on prices. Longer term, challenges will persist across some pockets of the market. This all could shape a market that looks less extremely negative in the near term than some fear, but one that also looks flatter over the medium term. That would be pretty atypical for such a cyclical sector—but this is no typical downturn,” he said.
