Here’s what the CREA now estimates the average Canadian home will sell for

Cherry blossom trees line a residential street in Vancouver, on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The Canadian Real Estate Association has downgraded its forecast for home sales activity in 2026, while the number of homes across the country sold in March fell 2.3 per cent from a year earlier.

CREA is now expecting a total of 474,972 residential properties to be sold throughout the year, which would be one per cent more than 2025. But that’s down from its previous forecast in January of 5.1 per cent growth year-over-year.

The national average home price is forecast to rise 1.5 per cent on an annual basis to $688,955 in 2026, which would be around $10,000 lower than predicted in January.

In March, the national average sale price fell 0.8 per cent compared with a year earlier to $673,084.

CREA’s own home price index, which aims to represent the sale of typical homes, edged 0.4 per cent lower between February and March and dropped 4.7 per cent on a year-over-year basis.

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That marked the 14th consecutive monthly decline in the national benchmark house price, leaving it down 20 per cent from the early-2022 peak, noted Oxford Economics senior economist Michael Davenport.

“We expect house prices to continue drifting lower before finding a bottom around mid-year, thanks to a resumption of modest job growth, improved affordability, and fiscal stimulus that will increasingly support demand,” said Davenport in a note.

However, he said that’s conditional on “a relatively short-lived U.S./Israel-Iran war” and a favourable renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

“There’s a material risk that Canada’s housing slump could persist for longer and lead to a deeper correction in prices,” he said.

While a long winter and economic uncertainty have delayed Canada’s spring housing market, Royal LePage president and CEO Phil Soper said he’s hopeful that consumer confidence could turn around quickly if there was positive news related to global tensions or trade uncertainty.

“Good news in any of the geopolitical high level areas could definitely lead to a fairly rapid change in behaviour,” said Soper in an interview.

“It doesn’t take much to turn the market around and certainly some positive news like a CUSMA agreement or a truce ... between the United States and Iran would help here at home.”

Royal LePage’s quarterly home price update and market forecast report, released Thursday, pointed to an uptick in activity in recent weeks that could signal a potential turnaround.

“The volume of transactions did increase quarter-over-quarter,” said Soper, despite reluctance on the part of first-time buyers in particular.

“So there is life in Canadian housing, but it still remains a slow market.”

Royal LePage is forecasting that the aggregate price of a home in Canada will increase one per cent in the fourth quarter of 2026 compared with the same quarter last year.

CREA said rising global economic uncertainty “piled on to an already shaky economic start to the year” in March.

It said its forecast was dampened by higher inflation tied to a spike in oil prices. That has raised the odds of a Bank of Canada rate hike later this year, prompting higher bond yields and resulting in a jump in fixed mortgage rates.

The association said it expects higher mortgage rates to curtail activity on their own, but the potential for the oil shock to be short lived will likely also cause many buyers to wait for rates to fall before making their move.

“2026 is still expected to see a modest amount of upward momentum in sales and a stabilization in prices as some pent-up first-time buyer demand enters the market, but the forecast for the year has had to be revised downward,” said CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart in a press release.

“The timing of higher mortgage rates, along with the perception they may be temporary, could keep would-be buyers away at the most active time of year — April, May, and June — as they wait for rates to come back down.”

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National home sales were virtually unchanged in March on a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis.

The number of newly listed properties ticked 0.2 per cent lower month-over-month. A total of 167,524 properties were listed for sale by the end of the month, up one per cent from a year earlier and 10.6 per cent below the long-term average for this time of the year.

“Canada’s resale housing market is stuck in a rut, and it doesn’t look likely to break out of it any time soon,” said Davenport, adding activity moved lower for the fifth consecutive month in March.

Looking ahead to 2027, CREA said it now forecasts national home sales to improve by 2.1 per cent to 485,071. But it cautioned that number could rise above the 500,000 mark if higher interest rates prove unnecessary to fight inflation.

The national average home price is expected to edge up 0.9 per cent from 2026 to $695,094 next year, subject to an upward revision if the current oil shock and associated inflation end up being short lived.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 16, 2026.

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press