Bad July Housing News

By Elli Davis, August 21, 2010

Boats under a Cloudy Sky by Luis Argerich

More negative economic news from Canada, this time about real estate. As the Canadian Real Estate Association have just announced, existing home sales in our country fell by 6.8 percent in July, to 31,536 units. Their level a month before, in June, was 33,836 units.

The average home price was $330,351 last month, showing just a very slight, 1 percent, rise from a year ago. Furthermore, new listings fell by 7.2 percent to 65,454 units. The value of sold homes declined too, by 7 percent to $10.5 billion. Quite expectedly, the biggest decreases were seen in the provinces in which a harmonized sales tax was introduced on July 1; that is, Ontario and British Columbia. According to CREA, in both of these provinces people were in a hurry to purchase homes before the harmonized sales tax was put in force.

The current situation is really not that good; especially if we look at how great Canada was recovering from the recession, when compared to other developed countries.

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