CANADA HOUSING MARKET: TRADE UNCERTAINTY CLOUDING THE INCOME OUTLOOK AND REDUCES HOUSING DEMAND

From March to April national sales were essentially unchanged while new listings declined, leading to a marginal rise in the sales-to-new listings ratio over this period. Despite the uptick for this indicator in April, market conditions have significantly eased since the beginning of this year as reflected by the trend decline in this indicator and the rise in the months of inventory almost to its pre-pandemic average.

National housing sales stayed relatively stable from March to April, edging down marginally (-0.1%), almost halting their constant decline since November 2024 (with a cumulative drop of 19.2%), the time when the upcoming U.S. administration made clear that imports from Canada and other countries would be slapped with steep tariffs and subsequently followed through with this stated intention. In April, sales were near 18% below their 2015-2024 period average level. National sales were -9.8% lower in April than their level in the same month of 2024.

New listings declined -1.0% nationally from March to April but are still at relatively high historical levels, exceeding their 2015-2024 period average by about 7.2%. They increased 1.2% from the same month in 2024.

Despite the modest uptick in the sales-to-new listings ratio from March to April—from 46.4 to 46.8%—this indicator has been trending towards the estimated threshold for buyers’ favourable conditions since November of last year. Indeed, this indicator has eased considerably since the Bank of Canada started hiking its policy rate in March 2022 as sales trended down at a faster pace (a -38.3% cumulative decline since February 2022) than new listings (-5.7%).

https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/economics/economics-publications/post.other-publications.housing.housing-news-flash.may-15--2025.html