August Home Sales Fell Again — and the Buyer's Market Just Got Deeper

What CREA's August figures actually show

The Canadian Real Estate Association reported 37,504 home sales across Canada in August, down 6.9% from the same month last year — the weakest August total since 2012, according to CREA's own release and Canadian Mortgage Trends' coverage of it.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, activity slipped a smaller 0.7% compared with July, which CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart described as the fourth straight month where sales and pricing trends were largely unchanged. The national average sale price came in at $668,219, up a modest 0.6% from a year earlier. CREA's own home price index — which strips out the effect of an unusually expensive or cheap sale skewing the average — was roughly flat between July and August but sits 3.0% below where it stood a year ago.

Put plainly: prices are not falling sharply on a national basis, but they are not recovering either. The market has been treading water since spring, and August's sales figure was the clearest sign yet that the pause is lasting longer than expected.

The number that tells you more than the headline: sales-to-listings

The headline sales figure gets the attention, but the sales-to-new-listings ratio (SNLR) is the number that actually describes negotiating power. It compares how many homes sold against how many new listings came onto the market, and analysis of CREA's data by Better Dwelling put August's national reading at 50.7% — down two points from a year earlier and the weakest August figure since 1997, nearing what Better Dwelling called a generational low. For comparison, the ratio peaked at 76.9% in August 2021, near the top of the pandemic-era sellers' market.

CREA reported 74,028 new listings in August, 3.3% higher than July and enough to end a run of three straight monthly declines earlier in the summer. Total inventory across Canada was just under 200,000 properties at month's end, up 1.4% from a year earlier — in line with the long-term average for that point in the season, not an unusual glut. Sellers, in other words, kept listing through August even as fewer buyers showed up to compete for what they listed.

Where southern Ontario fits in this picture

BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic, commenting on the release, called the national figures “soft” by historical standards but “not completely tapped out,” and pointed out that the answer “really depends on what regional market you're in” — naming southern Ontario and much of British Columbia specifically as the two large regions still lagging the rest of the country's recovery. “All in,” he wrote, “this is still a very stable/flat/subdued market at the national level.”

That regional lag lines up with what this site has already tracked through the summer: the GTA's benchmark price dipping under $1 million for a second time this year, and Waterloo Region's own board reporting home price index figures down year over year through July. Southern Ontario carrying more of the national softness than the country as a whole is not a new trend as of August — it is a continuation of one.

“All in, this is still a very stable/flat/subdued market at the national level.”— Robert Kavcic, Senior Economist, BMO Capital Markets

Why economists expect this to cool further before it warms up

CREA's Cathcart tied the softness to a shift in the broader economic backdrop rather than anything specific to housing. “What has changed is the broader economic environment,” he said in CREA's release, pointing to the Bank of Canada's own recent warnings about inflation risk and lingering doubt about how durable the country's economic growth actually is. On the borrowing side, he noted that pricing on fixed mortgage terms has already climbed on higher bond yields, and that overnight swap markets are pricing in a possible move higher on the variable side before the end of the year — language that matches what this site covered in more depth after Statistics Canada's August inflation release.

For a buyer weighing whether to wait this out, the practical read is this: a softer sales market and cheaper borrowing are not the same thing, and right now they are not moving together. Inventory sitting on the market gives a buyer more room to negotiate on price, ask for conditions, or walk from a property that does not check out on inspection — all real advantages. It does not, on its own, mean the mortgage on that property will cost less to carry than it would have in spring.

The Ontario-specific piece of the puzzle showed up the day after CREA's release, too. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported that housing starts edged lower again in August, with Ontario named as the province driving most of the national decline. Fewer homes under construction today is a supply story playing out over years, not months — but it is part of why economists are not expecting today's buyer-friendly conditions to turn into a lasting shift in the balance of power.

What this means if you are shopping right now

• A slower sales market rewards buyers who can move decisively — which usually means a pre-qualification already in hand, not a scramble to arrange financing after an offer is accepted.
• Inventory near the long-run average means more genuine choice than the market offered through 2021 and 2022, but it is not the flood of listings a true buyer's market implies either.
• The gap between a soft sales market and unchanged (or higher) borrowing costs is worth running through actual numbers before assuming today's conditions favour waiting.
• Southern Ontario lagging the national recovery is a regional pattern, not a promise — individual neighbourhoods and property types inside the region still move differently from each other.

None of this is a signal to time the market perfectly — nobody reliably does. It is a reason to know your own numbers before you're standing in front of a property you like, competing against however many other buyers happen to show up that weekend.