Home sales in December 2020 set an all-time record for the month, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has said.
It came at the end of a record year in which 551,392 homes were sold – up 12.6% on 2019.
In December 2020, said sales were up 47.2% on December 2019.
The 47.2% increase represents the largest year-over-year increase in monthly sales in 11 years.
December 2020 sales were also up 7.2% compared with November 2020.
The COVID-19-related homebuying hysteria has also pushed the actual average Canadian house price up to $607,280.
That’s an increase of 17.1% on December 2019, CREA said.
"It’s official, despite all the challenges, 2020 was a record year for Canadian resale housing activity,” stated Costa Poulopoulos, chair of CREA.
Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist, said the stat to watch in 2021 will be new listings.
“We already have record-setting sales, but we know demand is much stronger than those numbers suggest because we can see it impacting prices. On New Year’s Day there were fewer than 100,000 residential listings on all Canadian MLS® Systems, the lowest ever based on records going back three decades," he said.
“Compare that to five years ago, when there was a quarter of a million listings available for sale. So we have record-high demand and record-low supply to start the year. How that plays out in the sales and price data will depend on how many homes become available to buy in the months ahead.”
