The Canadian Real Estate Association fully anticipates home sales to be strong enough to reach record highs this calendar year, before eventually relenting in 2022.
In a report released earlier this morning, the association said it expects just over 700,000 property transactions through Canadian MLS channels in 2021, a jump from the 551,262 reported in 2020. The CREA is forecasting a total of 614,000 transactions for 2022.
The association believes the national home average price will increase by 16.5 per cent to $665,000 this year, and to climb again up to $679,000 in 2022.
CREA's projections illustrates how the pandemic has not deterred buyers from throwing their hats into the home ownership ring - even with pricy markets, waves of layoffs and considerably high unemployment.
"At this point everyone knows how far the current monthly sales numbers are from historical norms, and that they have been setting record after record for eight months now, so this should not be a surprise," stated CREA chair Costa Poulopoulos.
The new outlook was released as CREA announced that sales for the month of February reached a total of 58,021, a 6.6 per cent increase from the previous month and a whopping 39 percent increase compared to the 40,550 reported in February of last year.
The biggest yearly gain that the CREA reported was just over 35 percent in the Lakeland region of Ontario's renowned cottage country.
"We are right at the start of the first undisturbed (by policy or lockdown) spring housing market in years and we also have the most extreme demand-supply imbalance ever by a large margin," said CREA senior economist, Shaun Cathcart.
He believes the rise in demand is due to the regulatory changes of previous years - before COVID struck. Many prospective buyers are wanting a home for the purpose of refuge until the end of the pandemic, while others are looking to purchase before prices rise any higher and while mortgage rates persist at record lows.