Market update January 2025: Trends stay on course for cooler summer

2024 ended with softening home sales and rent prices, increasing housing supply, and fewer non-permanent residents – trends we expect to continue into 2025.

• The average national asking rent fell by $13 from October to a 15-month low of $2,139 in November 2024, according to Rentals.ca. This represents a 1.6% year-over-year decline.

• Rents in all of Canada’s five largest markets fell over the past year, led by a 9.4% drop in Toronto to $2,640 – the city’s lowest in 28 months. Experts link the trend to unsold condos entering the rental market instead, an increase in purpose-built rentals, and reduced demand due to new limits on international study permits.

• Meanwhile, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reports an average national home price of $694,411 in November 2024 – down 0.25% month over month and up 7.4% year over year.

• CREA also reports a 2.8% month-over-month increase in home sales in November.

• Ontario continues to have among the highest average home prices in the country (second only to British Columbia) at $868,067– 1.2% lower than last month’s average.

• Despite higher prices, Ontario's well-balanced sales-to-new-listings ratio of 55% in November sets it apart as the only province that isn’t currently a seller's market.

• The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reports the six-month trend in housing starts was flat in November at 243,268 units.

More rental market headlines

What Trudeau and the Liberals have (and haven’t) done on housing – Storeys

Experts are betting on purpose-built rentals in 2025 – Canadian Mortgage Professional

The lag between electric vehicles and rental property regulations – PayProp blog