Canadian housing prices moved lower in November, marking their first decline since 2023.
National home values for the month dropped by 1 per cent compared to a year ago, according to data from Wahi, a digital real estate platform, and Real Property Solutions, a Canadian property valuation service provider. The latest data showed that major markets such as Toronto and Vancouver continue to struggle and offset growth in the Prairie and Quebec regions.
This month, we looked at Calgary, Victoria and Collingwood as areas that are bucking national or regional real estate trends. The Globe and Mail spoke to realtors and Wahi economist Ryan McLaughlin to understand why.
Collingwood, Ont.
The two words that Royal LePage real estate broker Desmond von Teichman repeated to describe Collingwood’s market activity this year: “weird” and “strange.”
“There was no clear direction in the market and there was a lot of vacillating,” said Mr. von Teichman, who mentioned economic uncertainty stemming from the trade war as one factor that hit the Ontario ski town particularly hard.
The erratic behaviour of Collingwood’s market might be why RPS-Wahi’s year-over-year figures have jumped so much. Values went from flat in September to a 5-per-cent drop in November. The only other community to post such a large change in this report was Victoria.
Mr. von Teichman said Royal LePage’s numbers paint a slightly more optimistic outlook for the Collingwood area. The third quarter report showed an 18-per-cent increase in sales to 1,406 units. However, that is still much lower than COVID-19 pandemic levels of 1,900 to 2,000 sales.
Through all the movement in Collingwood’s market, Mr. McLaughlin said the overlying trend is that real estate in this recreational community has been stagnant, especially considering the period of non-stop and steep growth from 2015 to 2021.
