Canadian home prices post their smallest drop in nearly a year
BNN Bloomberg
The pressure on Canadian home prices eased up in February as the Bank of Canada paused its campaign of interest rate hikes.
The country’s benchmark home price dropped 1.1 per cent in February from the month before to $704,300 (US$512,060), the smallest month-to-month decline since last March, according to seasonally adjusted data released Wednesday by the Canadian Real Estate Association.
The past year’s surge in borrowing costs spurred one of the fastest declines in Canadian homes values on record. But now the Bank of Canada is pausing, keeping interest rates unchanged this month as it weighs the impact of higher borrowing costs on the economy, easing some of the pressure.
Home sales started to tick back up in February, with transactions climbing 2.3 per cent from a month earlier, according to the CREA data. The number of newly listed homes hitting the market, meanwhile, plunged 7.9 per cent on the month, limiting supply.
