Average Canadian house price fell 12% last year, new CREA numbers show

The price of the average Canadian home that sold in December was $626,318, a decline of more than 12 per cent from where it was the same month a year ago. The Canadian

Real Estate Association, which represents more than 150,000 realtors across the country, released new numbers about the country's housing market on Monday, showing that the number

of homes sold and the prices they fetched were both sharply lower in December than they were the same month a year earlier. Sales fell by more than 39 per cent from December

2021's level. And prices were also well down from an average of $713,500 at the end of 2021, and a peak of $816,720 reached in February 2022, before the Bank of Canada started

aggressively raising lending rates. The realtor group says the average selling price can be misleading since it is easily skewed by sales of expensive homes in places like

Toronto and Vancouver. So, it tabulates a different number — known as the House Price Index — that adjusts for the volume and type of housing sold. The HPI was down by 13

per cent in the year up to December, with Ontario and British Columbia seeing the biggest declines, while just about everywhere else saw either small declines or even slight

increases in some cases. On an annual basis, the HPI went up by 2.4 per cent in Victoria, 8.6 per cent in Calgary, 6.4 per cent in Quebec City and 6.3 per cent in Halifax,

CREA says.