The Canadian Real Estate Association reduced its 2026 forecast for total home sales to 444,530, projecting a 5.2% decline from 2025.
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The Canadian Real Estate Association has downgraded its forecast for home sales activity in 2026 for the third straight quarter.
CREA now expects a total of 444,530 homes to be sold by the end of 2026, representing a 5.2% decrease from 2025. That forecast is down from CREA’s July projection of a 1.4% year-over-year decline.
The association projects the national average home price will rise 0.2% year over year to $681,681 in 2026, which is about $5,000 lower than its summer prediction.
In September, the national average sale price fell 1.6% compared with the same month a year earlier, to $666,538.
CREA’s own home price index—intended to represent the sale of typical homes—edged 0.4% lower from August to September, while falling 3.4% on a year-over-year basis.
CREA said national home sales were down 7.7% in September compared with the same month last year, and activity fell 2.3% from August.
In a news release, CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart said that after “a four-month run of modestly positive progress on demand, supply, and prices,” many housing markets “took a step back in September,” which he said followed “the latest jump in fixed mortgage rates.”
Cathcart added that “with the Bank of Canada now widely expected to follow with a rate hike before the end of the year,” uncertainty is likely to keep some buyers on the sidelines until the path for inflation next year becomes clearer.
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