It’s been less than a year since we purchased a four-bedroom townhouse in Surrey, British Columbia. For $870,000, Aneesh Bhandari and his wife decided to sell his home in early May.

Both were looking forward to the first opening of his house, Bhandari said. They later discover that only one person came to view the property.

“It was an eye-opener,” Bhandari told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Thursday. “My realtor didn’t expect that. Nobody expected that.”

Bhandari and his wife moved from British Columbia to Ontario to Planning to approach his employer’s office in Mississauga. But the 36-year-old man said the process of selling his current home and buying a new one was a struggle.

Even 30 days after it was on the market, the 167-square-meter home, which was listed for $1.15 million, was listed $50,000 less than similar homes in the area. Regardless, it had not yet sold, Bhandari said. In mid-June, he pulled the house off the market.

“At that point, sellers were expecting yesterday’s price and buyers wanted tomorrow’s price,” Bhandari said.

From employer December After getting a stay-at-home extension until 2020, Bhandari plans to relist the home in October in order to sell it by the end of the year.

Bhandari is one of several Canadians who have written to CTVNews.ca about the impact of the Canadian housing adjustment on their decision to buy or sell a home. After a string of rate hikes implemented by the Bank of Canada, the housing market is now facing a “widespread” correction across the country, according to a new Royal Bank report. (RBC).

Falling home prices and declining resale activityindicate that the overall Canadian housing market is currently cooling. Average Canadian house prices are expected to fall through the rest of 2022, according to RBC forecasts,[25] ultimately pushing him from his peak in February by mid-2023. is down 12%.

“[This is] going to be a very important adjustment,” RBC’s assistant his chief economist Robert Hoag told his CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview Wednesday. rice field. “Nationally, we rarely see double-digit price declines like this.” Rising interest rates played a key role in correcting some of the abnormal rise, he said.

“The last few years have been irrational, and there has been some rationality in correcting the frenzy that’s going on at the moment,” Laird said in a Wednesday telephone interview, telling CTVNews. told ca. “Given the blistering pace of the past two-and-a-half years, it makes sense to take a breather.”

After hitting a record $816,720 in February, national average home prices are steadily declining, data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) shows. The average Canadian home price in June was $665,849, not seasonally adjusted.

Lack of certainty about what to expect from the Bank of Canada regarding further interest rate hikes may also encourage some Canadians to become market bystanders, he said. Laird said.

“We don’t know exactly where banks want to go, as they are still in the transition period from pandemic interest rate policy to post-pandemic inflation rate policy,” Laird said.

In the face of market shifts driven by falling home prices, Hogue said sellers today need to be pragmatic and recognize that the market is very different than it was just a few months ago. said there is.

“Prices are likely to continue to fall over the next few months, so the market is unlikely to be seller-friendly in the short term,” Hogue said. “Buyers are entering the market with smaller budgets ….. they have tighter limits on [how much they can buy].”

Toronto and Vancouver areas are more balanced

The large housing markets of Ontario and British Columbia are expected to see the biggest corrections compared to the rest of Canada, according to an RBC report. The reason is the extremely high housing prices that characterized these areas during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hoag said those areas are more vulnerable to rising interest rates.

Average home prices in Ontario and British Columbia peaked at $1,086,493 and $1,104,098 respectively in February, according to data compiled by CREA. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted.

Since then, activity has fallen to its slowest pace in more than 13 years outside of pandemic lockdowns. It said more room for bargaining was left between buyers and sellers as it balanced.

“[Buyers] have to be on the lookout all the time because … there’s always someone to sell to,” he told his CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview Wednesday. . “Some people don’t want to wait six to eight weeks to sell their house. They may want the cash right away.”

Still a buyer’s market in parts of southern Ontario. Maybe not, but according to Clayton, the market appears to be more balanced. The same is true for the Greater Vancouver area, according to RBC’s report. Housing activity in the region has fallen 40% over the past four months, and home prices across all home types have also fallen 4.5% since April.

It is also important to understand that some of these regions will experience different adjustment impacts than others, he said, Laird said.

“[Prices] have seen the most price increases in suburban and more rural real estate in his two years of pandemic madness…and where prices have corrected the most,” said Laird. said. “[But] urban centers haven’t risen as much as their surrounding suburbs, so they haven’t fixed that much.”

Houses still “less afforable”, says real estate expert

Desjardins’ real estate outlook also shows New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are in grave danger A fix after home prices skyrocketed during the pandemic.

However, parts of Alberta are expected to be more resilient. Hogue said corrections in this part of Canada are expected to be slower than in other parts of Canada, despite lower prices.

Average home prices may be falling nationwide, but this doesn’t mean housing has become more affordable for Canadians, Laird said.

Falling house prices are being driven by rising interest rates, and homeowners will have to pay more on their mortgages. Because borrowing costs are higher, people looking to buy a home are less likely to qualify for a mortgage as a result, Hogue said.This is particularly difficult for homebuyers trying to enter the housing market for the first time.

Taylor because her Wright and her fiancée are currently looking for a new home. 1 I am renting her bedroom apartment. I am considering purchasing either Ajax or Ont. Or in Whitby, Ontario, where her budget is $800,000, Wright said prices for her and her fiancée are still off the market.

“All the homes we have seen are still nearly $100,000 above asking price. We participate in bidding wars and overpay for homes.” I don’t mean to,” Wright wrote in her email to CTVNews.ca on Thursday.

House prices have “increased and become unaffordable,” said Wright, who has been keeping an eye on the state’s housing market since the pandemic began. Still, she said her rising interest rates and falling prices have given her hope that she might be able to buy a house in six months.

Diordan Svelander and his wife are looking to buy a home in the Greater Vancouver area. He said he couldn’t afford the down payment on a house despite working two full-time jobs because housing prices are so high.

Svelander said he and his family tried to find the city of Chetwynd, British Columbia, north of the city. The couple had his eye on one house, but he could no longer afford it as interest rates rose each year.

“The money we saved was not enough to withstand the stress test and we exhausted all options in an attempt to buy,” Svelander said Wednesday in his e-mail to CTVNews.ca. I am writing to you by email.

As a result, the couple now rents a two-bedroom unit that he has with two young children and a pet, Mr Svelander said.

A recent report by Ratehub.ca assessed the income required to buy the average home in various Canadian cities. So far, the economic losses from rising interest rates have not been offset by gains from falling home prices, Laird said. In all Canadian cities included in the report, residents need, on average, more income to buy a typical home.

“You had a better chance of buying a home a year ago with those elevated prices but with lower mortgage rates ….. than you do with the more modest home prices but higher mortgage rates,” Laird said. “It actually means that everything is less affordable than it’s ever been.”

Seller Expect Yesterday’s Prices : Canadians Deal with Housing Market Correction by Jennifer Ferreira | CTV News