June home sales around Canada didn’t produce terrible numbers, but with slight drops in certain areas they still had many people asking if the slight improvement may have just been a blip on the radar, and one to quickly disappear at that. But July proved differently, and home sales for last month showed that we may have already dealt with any mortgage rules, and that we’re doing just fine while abiding by them.
According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA,) home sales were up 0.2 per cent in July when compared with the month of June this year. However, when comparing year over year, July home sales for this year surged up 9.4 per cent from where they sat July 2012. This means that we’re almost near the levels we reached before mortgage rules were tightened for the fourth (and hopefully, final) time last year.
As the housing and mortgage market started to heat up considerably last year, experts as well as the Conservative government began to fear that we were headed for a States-style crash that would take years to recover from, and hit some of our Canadian citizens especially hard. After a considerably slowing last year, which explains the poor numbers during the month new mortgage rules were implemented, it seemed that may have been a prediction about to become true.
Now, it’s good to know that those bearish views were just that – views that weren’t ever going to reach fruition.
“More evidence that Canada’s housing market has absorbed last year’s mortgage rule tightening, and that the overall market remains balanced and well-behaved,” said BMO senior economist, Robert Kavcic is a research note. He also goes on to say that these numbers don’t just trump those of last year, but that we’ve also rebounded very well from our lowest point, seen in February of this year.
“Despite the bearish fingers pointed at Canada’s housing market, sales have rebounded 11 per cent from their February lows and now sit almost right in line with the 10-year average,” he says.
And, those who have been watching Canada’s hottest markets expecting a chilly frost to soon overtake them may be in for a surprise as well. July’s busy home sales were led by double-digit increases seen in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto.
