CREA Updates Resale Housing Forecast

OTTAWA — The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has updated its forecast for home sales activity via the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Systems of Canadian real estate Boards and Associations for 2016 and extended it to include 2017.
CREA’s recent forecasts anticipated that housing activity would rebalance in 2016, with cooling activity and smaller price gains in British Columbia and Ontario, resulting in slower national price growth. However, many of the defining themes among Canadian housing markets last year have persisted, and in some cases intensified, in early 2016. Interest rate are now also widely expected to remain low for longer, with administered lending rates beginning to rise no earlier than the second half of 2017.