CREA Updates Resale Housing Market Forecast Amid Continuing Economic Uncertainty
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) updated its 2025 and 2026 forecasts for home sales activity and average home prices via the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Systems operated by Canadian real estate boards and associations.
In CREA’s April forecast, the expectation was flat sales and average home prices at the national level in 2025 compared to 2024. According to CREA, this was a significant revision to January’s forecast of a recovery year, as the threat of U.S. tariffs had to be incorporated into the outlook.
For this most recent forecast, sales and average home prices are now forecast to post small declines in 2025 in comparison to 2024, as the tariff uncertainty ended up taking a larger bite out of activity in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario than was expected three months ago.
According to CREA, the good news is markets appear to be entering their long-expected recovery phase, fueled by pent-up demand, lower interest rates, and an economy that is expected to avoid worst-case tariff scenarios. It also noted that it is looking like the timing of the start of that recovery may have been shifted from the spring to the summer by the “cloud of extreme economic uncertainty” earlier this year.
Some 469,503 residential properties are forecast to trade hands via Canadian MLS Systems in 2025, representing a 3 per cent decline from 2024. British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario are the only provinces forecast to post declines this year, slightly offsetting gains everywhere else.
The national average home price is forecast to edge back by 1.7 per cent on an annual basis to $677,368 in 2025, which is about $10,000 lower than was forecast back in mid-April.
Only British Columbia and Ontario are forecast to see declines in average home prices this year, but the combination of those declines, along with fewer sales in those expensive provinces was enough to offset price gains in the range of 4 per cent to 8 per cent in all other provinces in 2025.
In 2026, national home sales are forecast to rebound by 6.3 per cent to 499,081, which would put activity back on track with what was expected in the April forecast. CREA noted it would still mark the fourth straight year for sales failing to crack the half million mark, something that has only occurred seven times going back to the first recorded instance in 2007.
The national average home price is forecast to increase by 3 per cent from 2025 to $697,929 in 2026. This would mark the sixth straight year where the national average home price remained in and around the $700,000 range.
CREA concluded by stating that it’s important to reiterate that all forecasts are still subject to very high levels of uncertainty, though maybe less now than in the first half of they year.