Canadian housing enters a “boring” era marking a new period of stability for housing sales, after a less-than-stellar 2018 and early 2019. We have not heard Real Estate referred to as “boring” for a long time but Doug Porter, BMO chief economist says “The big story here is that sales and prices are essentially flat on a national basis, and the market is close to overall balance, and therefore sales activity is almost right on top of it’s 10-year average, which is exactly what policy makers would like to see.” It’s a pretty good spot to be in, avoiding boom but avoiding bust as well.

More than 80 per cent of all local markets in Canada were in balanced market territory in June, the largest share in three years. The overall national market is likely to strengthen modestly over the next 18 months and we are looking for sales and prices to both rise roughly 2 per cent in 2020, nationwide.

The Toronto housing market is recovering nicely, and prices are on the rise. TREB predicts the average home price will see a 4.1% gain this year. The one thing that is troubling is that we really haven’t seen any movement in new listings. In fact, we’re starting to see a decline again on a year-over-year basis in the number of listings coming to market. Because of the shortage of new listings, bidding wars are on the rise again. It seems the sky is not falling and with interest rates dropping the combination has brought some enthusiasm back to the housing market. This renewed interest is a contributing factor to the rising prices.