Canadian March home sales fall to 16-year low as tariff fears persist
March 2025 CREA recap
Ongoing trade war fears have effectively stalled what should have been a robust spring housing market, as sales chill and a slog of new inventory builds up.
March national home sales plunged to levels not seen since 2009 last month, reports the Canadian Real Estate Association, with a total of 39,202 properties changing hands across the nation – a decline of 9.3% from the same time frame in 2024, and down 4.3% from February. Combined with the declines recorded over the previous three months, home sales now sit 20% below their recent peak last November.
“Up until this point, declining home sales have mostly been about tariff uncertainty. Going forward, the Canadian housing space will also have to contend with the actual economic fallout. In short order we’ve gone from a slam dunk rebound year to treading water at best,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist.
Trade war prompts CREA to degrade housing forecast
In fact, activity has slowed to such an extent that CREA has revised its forecast downward for this year, by the largest degree since for a quarterly outlook since the 2008-2009 financial crisis (the association put forecasting on hold in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic).
“Amid ongoing unpredictability and given the fact that it is still far from clear what interest rates will do this year amid a potential stagflation, all forecasts continue to be subject to unprecedented levels of uncertainty,” states CREA’s new forecast release. The new outlook calls for sales activity to remain roughly unchanged (down 0.02%) in 2025 compared to 2024, with 482,673 properties to sell. That’s a considerable revision to the previously expected increase of 8.6%, which CREA called for as early as the start of the year.
“CREA released its previous forecast on January 15. While it was too early to incorporate the potential and significant downside risks of a trade war into the forecast at that time, the forecast did state that tariffs targeting the Canadian economy would put what had been expected to be a recovery year for housing in Canada in jeopardy,” reads the association’s monthly data release.
The slowdown is expected to linger into 2026. While national home sales are forecast to improve by 2.9% that year to 496,487, it would mark the fourth consecutive year that sales volume comes in below 500,000.
Home prices see modest declines
Slowing sales are having a modest pulldown effect on home prices, though CREA hasn’t called for a major correction as of yet on property values. The national average home price, which slowed in March by 3.7% year over year to $678,331, is set to fall by another 0.3% this year to $687,898, about $30,000 less than originally forecast. British Columbia and Ontario are expected to see small declines in average home prices, while in other provinces, expected increases in average home prices have been scaled back to the 3% to 5% range for 2025.
The national average home price is then forecast to edge up by 1.2% from 2025 to $696,074 in 2026.
An overall balanced housing market
Amid slowing sales, the number of homes available for sale are piling up, giving motivated buyers plenty of choice and balanced conditions. According to CREA, a total of 86,953 homes were listed in March, up 13/1% compared to the same time frame in 2024, and up 3% on a monthly basis.
Combined with the decrease in sales, the national sales-to-new listings ratio fell to 45.9%, down from 49.7% in February. This ratio, which gauges the level of buyer competition in the housing market, is now at its lowest since February 2009, and well below its long-term average of 54.9%.
CREA considers a reading between 45% and 65% to indicate a balanced housing market.
Overall, there were 165,800 properties listed for sale on all Canadian MLS® Systems at the end of March 2025, up 18.3% compared to the end of March 2024. From a long-term perspective, however, around 174,000 listings is typical for this time of year. Valérie Paquin, Chair of CREA’s 2025-2026 Board of Directors, points out that while sales are down in most markets across Canada, tighter seller-friendly conditions persist in high-demand regions.
“While the trend of falling monthly sales has been observed across Canada over the last few months, there are still many regions where sales are high, inventory is near record lows, and prices are rising,” she said. “There are also parts of the country with historically low sales and the highest inventory levels in a decade or more.”
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Penelope Graham, Head of Content
Penelope has over a decade of experience covering real estate, mortgage, and personal finance topics and her commentary on the housing market is featured on both national and local media outlets.