National home sales continue to recover in June
June 2025 CREA recap
National home sales continued to warm up in June, as buyers returned to regional markets after sticking to the sidelines throughout the spring.
A total of 47,871 homes traded hands over the course of the month, reports the Canadian Real Estate Association. That marks an increase of 3.5% compared to the same period last year, and also reflects demand heating up in the short term with sales up 2.8% from May.
Those are welcome green shoots after months of stagnancy throughout what is typically the busy spring selling season; home buyers had largely put off their purchases in the early months of the year due to the volatility posed by US tariff threats. While those haven’t yet dissipated, recent economic data shows Canadian jobs and spending remain strong, bringing tentative confidence back to the market.
“At the national level, June was pretty close to a carbon copy of May, with sales up about 3% on a month-over-month basis and prices once again holding steady,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist. “It’s another month of data suggesting the anticipated rebound in Canadian housing markets may have only been delayed by a few months, following a chaotic start to the year; although with the latest 35% tariff threat, we’re not out of the woods yet.”
CREA says the majority of rebounding sales is happening in the Greater Toronto Area, with transactions up 17.3% from April.
Home prices have yet to heat up
However, the early uptick in sales has yet to heat home prices; the national average slipped further by 1.3% year over year to $691,643, though was up 1.5% on a monthly basis. CREA reports that the MLS Home Price Index – which measures the most typical type of home transaction, with the upper and lower extremes removed – fell 3.7% compared to June 2024.
However, given how prices had rapidly chilled in the second half of 2024, that gap should start to shrink in the coming months, as the market continues to recover. The measure was largely unchanged on a monthly basis (-0.2%), stabilizing after three consecutive month-over-month declines between February and April.
Bidding wars could return
There continues to be more homes available for sale compared to last June, but that ample supply is starting to tighten up. A total of 97,093 homes were newly listed in June, up 8.2% year over year, but down 2.9% compared to May.
Combined with the uptick in sales, this has toughened conditions for buyers as the national sales-to-new-listings ratio (SNLR) rose to 50.1% from 47.3% in May. This ratio measures the level of buyer competition in the marketplace and the level of balanced; a range between 45 - 65% generally reflects a balanced market, says CREA, with above and below that threshold indicating more seller or buyer-friendly conditions.
Overall, there were 206,435 properties listed for sale by the end of June, up 11.4% year-over- year and just 1% below the long-term average for that time of the year. The number of months of inventory – the amount of time it would take to fully sell off all available properties for sale amid current market conditions – came in at 4.7 months, just below the long-term average of five.
“Most housing markets continued to turn a corner in June, although market conditions still vary considerably depending on where you are in Canada,” said Valérie Paquin, CREA Chair. “If the spring market was mostly held back by economic uncertainty, barring any further big shocks, that delayed activity could very likely surface this summer and into the fall.”
CREA updates 2025 and 2026 forecast
As market conditions appear to be thawing, CREA released an updated market forecast, following its last in April. The association’s previous take had called for flat sales and price growth in 2025; this in turn was a sharp reduction from the January forecast, which had anticipated a boom year for activity.
However, the threat of US import tariffs – and resulting market chaos – derailed those expectations, as buyers were reluctant to enter the market.
Now that the effects of tariffs have been taken into account, CREA expects small year-over-year sales and price declines, with the largest drops seen in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario.
“The good news,” states CREA’s release, “is markets appear to be entering their long-expected recovery phase, fueled by pent-up demand, lower interest rates, and an economy that is expected to avoid worst-case tariff scenarios. As such, it’s looking like the timing of the start of that recovery may have been shifted from the spring to the summer by the cloud of extreme economic uncertainty earlier this year.”
CREA calls for 469,503 residential property sales in 2025, representing a 3% decline from 2024. “That said," reads the release, “British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario are the only provinces forecast to post declines this year, slightly offsetting gains everywhere else.”
The national average home price is forecast to drop by 1.7% to $677,368 in 2025 – just $10,000 shy of what was anticipated in April. Again, BC and Ontario are the only provinces set to see a price decline, but given their larger concentration of expensive homes, that’s enough to offset gains in the other provinces, which have seen price growth between 4 -8%.
2026 is now poised to be the comeback year for housing; CREA forecasts sales will increase by 6.2% to 499,081 units, putting the market back on track for its original April forecast. However, it will mark the fourth consecutive year that less than 500,000 homes will sell.
The national average home price, meanwhile, is forecast to increase by 3% from 2025 to $697,929 in 2026, marking the sixth consecutive year the average price hovers around the $700,000 range.
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Penelope Graham, Head of Content
Penelope has over a decade of experience covering real estate, mortgage, and personal finance topics and her commentary on the housing market is featured on both national and local media outlets.