Mid-Winter Auctions Slow And Steady
The fragile buyer and seller confidence continues to grip the market.
The fragile buyer and seller confidence continues to grip the market.
The typically chilly winter home auction market produced steady results across the country at the weekend with a reported clearance rate of 60.8% at the weekend which was lower than the 63.2% of last weekend and significantly lower than the 80.5% of the same weekend last year.
Saturday’s result was the lowest national weekend clearance rate since lockdown-impacted results of August 2020.
National auction numbers were higher at the weekend with 1442 listings compared to last weekend’s 1355 — but well below the same weekend last year’s 2179.
The Sydney auction market reported steady auction clearance rates at the weekend, with results still at the lowest level since April 2020.
The NSW capital recorded a clearance rate of 58.0% at the weekend — similar to the 58.7% recorded the previous weekend and well below the 78.0% recorded over the same weekend last year.
Auction numbers were higher at the weekend with 597 reported compared to the previous weekend’s 562 but again well down on the 872 auctioned over the same weekend last year.
Sydney recorded a median price of $1,515,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend which was lower than the $1,651,000 recorded last weekend and 5.5% lower than the same weekend last year’s $1,603,000
Melbourne’s clearance rates too held steady, albeit low, with a clearance rate of 60.4% on Saturday which was similar to the previous weekend’s 60.4% on Saturday which was similar to the previous weekend’s 60.0% — lower than the 73.2% recorded over the same weekend last year.
The Victorian capital recorded 598 homes listed at the weekend — higher than the 552 reported over the previous weekend but well below the 1061 listed over the same weekend last year.
Melbourne recorded a median price of $923,000 for houses sold at auction at the weekend which was lower than the $1,025,000 reported last weekend —7.0% lower than the $992,500 recorded over the same weekend last year.
Data Powered by Dr Andrew Wilson; My Housing Market
Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
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Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
OTTAWA–The nascent recovery in Canada’s housing market has become a casualty of the trade dispute with the U.S.
The latest national home-resale data are due out Tuesday, but early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month as many prospective buyers exercised caution.
The recent weakness in home sales has dimmed the previously brighter outlook for the property market coming into 2025, when buyers were encouraged by the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest-rate cuts.
“The chills the U.S. trade war has sent through participants in the housing market are getting frostier,” said Robert Hogue , assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada.
Hogue said resales are down materially in a number of markets two months running, and home prices in several markets are coming under pressure as inventories rise. And although Canada was spared additional levies when President Trump unveiled so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries earlier this month, no meaningful rebound is likely so long as trade uncertainty lingers, he said.
Home buyers in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and the country’s financial hub, aren’t turning up for the usual spring pickup in property-market activity.
Sales in the Greater Toronto Area slumped 23.1% in March from a year earlier, as new listings for the region jumped close to 29%, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. That marked the worst month of resales since 1998.
The board’s chief information officer, Jason Mercer , said many potential home buyers were likely taking a wait-and-see approach given the economic worries as well as a pending federal election. “Homebuyers need to feel their employment situation is solid before committing to monthly mortgage payments over the long term,” he said, adding that ownership has become more affordable and prices in the area fell about 3.8% year on year in March.
Uncertainty is also weighing on the housing market in Calgary, the biggest city in oil-rich Alberta. The city’s real-estate board said realtors reported a 19% drop in sales of existing homes from last year, with a similar trend of improving supply and a sharp increase in the average number of days that homes were on the market.
On the West Coast, home sales registered in the metro Vancouver area of British Columbia were the lowest for March since 2019, falling 13.4% on a year earlier and coming in close to 37% below the 10-year seasonal average, while active listings continued to rise.
There are some areas of resilience. The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers said total sales in the province were up 9% year on year in March. Still, RBC’s Hogue estimated Montreal sales in March were down about 15% from December seasonally adjusted, effectively rolling back the advance since the end of last summer.
The most recent national data for the country, from the Canadian Real Estate Association, showed resales dropped 9.8% month over month in February, when homebuyers may also have been put off by harsh winter storms in parts of the country. That marked the sharpest fall since May 2022 and brought the level of sales to their lowest level since November 2023, snapping signs that activity had been picking up in recent months.
Rishi Sondhi , an economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank, in a recent report estimated the country was tracking toward a double-digit quarterly decline in Canadian home sales and a mid-single-digit drop in Canadian average home prices for the first three months of 2025. That is much weaker than a pre-Trump inauguration forecast made in December that projected a loosening in federal mortgage rules, lower interest rates and continued economic growth would fuel a modest gain in sales and prices.
Central-bank officials are set to decide Wednesday on monetary policy, but they have signaled a cautious approach to rates as they balance the prospect of tariffs stoking price pressures against the likelihood that they will dampen demand and weigh on the economy. That could mean the Bank of Canada will pause after seven straight cuts to its policy rate.
Housing is a hot topic for party leaders campaigning ahead of the April 28 election, with both the incumbent Liberal Party and opposition Conservatives proposing tax cuts and incentives to encourage buyers and builders.
The outlook for new homes has also dimmed with the tariff threat. The value of residential-building permits issued in February fell 2.9% from a month prior, adding to a retreat in January that took back some of the surge in intentions in the final month of last year, Statistics Canada data last week showed.
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