OTTAWA (Reuters) – Greater Toronto-area home sales rose in August on a month-to-month basis, data showed on Thursday, rebounding from a drop in July.

Seasonally adjusted sales increased 0.6% in August following a drop of 0.8% in July, according to Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) data.

The August rise was only the third monthly increase in the last eight months, TRREB data showed.

Average prices for homes were down 0.8% last month to C$1.12 million ($815,178), ending a six-month rising streak, while new listings fell 1.6%, TRREB said in a release.

As classes commence this week and students settle into their new homes, both on- and off-campus, a new Desjardins report warns of a shortage of affordable student housing and its implications for the housing market writ large.

“Insufficient student accommodations should worry all Canadians,” wrote Desjardins economists Kari Norman and Randall Bartlett. As the demand for higher education in Canada continues to surge, the availability of student housing has not kept pace, the authors said.

Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) memberships declined by 1,363 year-over-year this July to 73,315, marking the first month since 2016, at least, to see a yearly decrease.

Scott Ingram, a TRREB member and chartered accountant, called attention to this unusual drop in membership via a Tweet shared last week. When contacted for comment, TRREB told STOREYS that it “does not share membership trends with the public.” But Ingram believes there are two likely factors behind the decline.

Canada’s planned builder boom is turning into a bust. The Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) released the results of its Q2 2024 survey. They found that home builder sentiment remained negative for an 8th consecutive quarter. As a result of weak demand, most plan to significantly reduce the numbers of homes they build—by half on average. 

Canadian Home Builder Sentiment Has Been Negative For 2 Years

Canadian home builder sentiment took a sharp turn in the second quarter. The CHBA’s quarterly survey shows Q2 2024 was the 8th quarter that sentiment remained in negative territory. At the national level, sentiment hasn’t quite returned to the all-time low reached at the end of 2022. However, builders remain less-than-optimistic about the prospects of building. 

The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) released its Housing Marketing Index (HMI) for Q2 2024 today, revealing a “broadly negative” home builder sentiment. Nationally, builder sentiment was negative for the eighth consecutive quarter, even lower than in Q1 2024.

Builder confidence is gleaned from CHBA’s HMI for single-family and multi-family builders, which “assesses current selling conditions, expectations for selling conditions over the next six months, and the level of sales office traffic,” essentially indicating how many homes we can expect to be built in the coming months, and beyond.

Countless builders are stuck with newly constructed homes they can’t sell. It’s not because their product isn’t good. It’s because many folks can’t buy due to ridiculous unaffordability — or won’t buy because of market uncertainty.

To snap potential buyers out of this trance, builders are dangling the carrot of mortgage incentives. Take CountryWide Homes, for example. It’s pitching three-year mortgage rates at just 2.34 per cent. That’s less than half the standard market rate.

Investment in Calgary rental properties almost doubled over the first six months of 2024 — a response to the city’s skyrocketing population and rent prices, one expert says.

The data comes amid Calgary’s third-highest six-month stretch of commercial real estate investment since 2013, showing the greatest amount of interest in rental properties and industrial land.

(Bloomberg) — New-home sales in the US bounced back to the highest level since May 2023 as buyers took advantage of lower mortgage rates and more listings to choose from.

Contract signings on new single-family homes increased 10.6% last month to a 739,000 annual rate, reflecting gains in all four major regions, government data Friday showed. The pace beat all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

The pickup in sales suggests the combination of lower mortgage rates and generous sales incentives by builders is starting to take root. Prospective buyers are finding more options in the new-home market as the supply of existing homes is still very constrained. Asking prices are also more competitive compared to the resale market.

Buying a home in Canada became slightly easier in July, according to a new report that cites dropping mortgage rates and lowering average home prices.

The minimum income required to purchase a home dipped last month across the 13 major cities studied by Ratehub.ca, according to their recent blog post.