Over at the CBC they’re talking about the expectations of lower sales across Canada, but a magic kind of lower sales that doesn’t really lead to much in the way of price drops:
“It comes down to the different psychology that exists between buyers and sellers. Buyers are very quick to adjust to a down market and sellers are very slow to adjust to a down market. Sellers stubbornly hold onto their perception of what their home is worth, whereas buyers turn on a dime.”
Soper expects to see sales decline dramatically from last July’s near-record activity, but predicts there will be little change in home prices when the Canadian Real Estate Association releases its monthly sales figures Monday.
Seasonally adjusted home sales fell 8.2 per cent in June from the month before and shrunk 19.7 per cent compared to June 2009. However, the average Canadian home price sat at $342,662 compared to $326,689 in 2009.
“You would think prices would come down more rapidly given the drop in sales,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets.
Guatieri expects to see as much as a 35 per cent year-over-year drop in July home sales. He projects monthly sales figures will be around 32,600 homes, which would represent the weakest July since 2001. However, he says price increases will weaken just slightly, and only because they were so high last year.
“It’s only in a so-called buyers’ market, where there are lot more listings on the market than sales, that buyers have some bargaining power and sellers are more willing to ease up on price, that we would see prices actually falling,” he said.
