Many homes in Canada cost under $300,000

November 19, 2019

Nova Scotia house listed November 2019: $139,000 - Point2Point

Despite numerous reports regarding the lack of affordable housing in Canada, it is increasingly a problem concentrated in Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).
Take those two markets out of the equation and the benchmark price of a home in Canada in October was $400,000, not the $525,000 figure that is widely quoted.
In reality, a huge swath of the population can buy a house for less than $300,000 and prices in some areas are decreasing, not increasing.
In both Newfoundland-Labrador and Nova Scotia, the typical home sold in October was priced at $248,000; in Prince Edward Island it was around $200,000 and New Brunswick homebuyers paid an average of $180,000.
In Quebec, $171,000 will buy a home in Saguenay—down 13 per cent from a year ago. The average price is $248,000 in Sherbrooke and it’s just $188,000 in Trois-Rivières .
In Sudbury, Ontario, the typical home price is $281,000 and it is $237,000 in Thunder Bay.
In Manitoba, the October home price averages $294,013, down 3 per cent from October of 2018. In Saskatchewan, the average was $278,548, down 1.1 per cent year-over-year. The average Alberta homebuyer in October paid $378,899, down 0.5 per cent from a year earlier, but the price in Lethbridge, Alberta’s third largest city, was $278,000.
“It’s a full-blown buyer’s market or on the cusp of one in a number of housing markets across the Prairies and in Newfoundland-Labrador,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist. “Homebuyers have the upper hand in purchase negotiations.”