Sales of existing homes in Canada fell 6.8 percent in July, almost entirely because of fewer sales in the big provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said on Monday. The figures are the latest to show that Canada's recently hot housing sector is no longer playing a major role in the country's economic recovery. Signs of a slowdown in the housing market have also cropped up in home-construction data and new-home prices.
CREA said a total of 31,536 homes changed hands in July, for the smallest month-on-month decline in two months. Compared with a year earlier, sales were down 30 percent. The slowdown in existing-home sales has been much forecast due to stricter lending rules, rising interest rates, and the introduction of harmonised sales taxes in Ontario and British Columbia. "A slowdown in demand in these two provinces had been widely expected in July, as many purchases were brought forward into the first half of the year in advance of the introduction of the (harmonized sales tax)," CREA said.
The harmonized sales tax was introduced in July. Sales in British Columbia were down 14.1 percent, and in Ontario, they were off 8 percent. The two provinces accounted for 85 percent of the change in national activity. CREA said the national average price in July was C$330,351 ($317,645), edging up 1 percent from the same month last year. The number of new listings fell 7.2 percent from the previous month.
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