Residential Market Commentary - Housing market slows further to end 2025

Canada’s resale housing market got a little softer to end 2025.  The December report from the Canadian Real Estate Association shows sales dipped 2.7% and CREA’s Home Price Index (HPI) slipped 0.3% compared to November. 

On a year-over-year basis, December sales fell 1.9%, with just over 470,000 properties changing hands.  The national average home price was virtually unchanged at $673,000 (-0.1%) but the HPI, which is the CREA’s preferred measure of pricing, fell 4.0% compared to December of 2024. 

CREA sees the decline in prices as a possible indication that some sellers were making concessions in order to sell their properties by the end of the year. 

“There doesn’t appear to have been much rhyme or reason to the month-over-month decline in home sales in December, which was simply the result of coincident but seemingly unrelated slowdowns in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal,” said CREA’s Senior Economist Shaun Cathcart. 

Most overall price softening in December came from markets in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe region. 

“Under the surface, year-over-year declines are larger for condo apartments and townhomes, and smaller for one and two-storey detached homes,” CREA said in its report. 

A number of analysts point to American trade policies and on-going economic uncertainty as the key factors that are keeping the market quiet, and buyers waiting on the sidelines.