Canadians feel grocery inflation getting worse, two in five boycotting Loblaw: poll
Almost two-thirds of Canadians feel that inflation at the grocery store is getting worse, a new poll suggests, even as food inflation has been steadily cooling.
Home sales across the country are starting to fall back from highs seen earlier in the year, but the Canadian Real Estate Association still expects the number of transactions during 2021 to set a new record.
May's 56,156 sales were a 7.4 per cent drop from April's 60,638, the association reported, and month-over-month sales declines occurred in close to 80 per cent of all markets.
The number of transactions in May was a significant drop compared with a year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading rapidly through the country, but the association expects sales to edge toward more typical levels through the latter half of 2021 and into 2022.
The association is predicting 2021 will see transactions rise 23.8 per cent from last year to reach a record-setting 682,900, then fall by 13 per cent to around 594,000 units in 2022.
CREA chair Cliff Stevenson attributed the slowing sales numbers to higher prices, a lack of supply and a general malaise spreading in many markets.
“More and more, there is anecdotal evidence of offer fatigue and frustration among buyers, and the urgency to lock down a place to ride out COVID would also be expected to fade,” he said, in a release.
CREA believes the declines in sales will be largest in B.C. and Ontario, where pre-pandemic bidding wars and soaring prices became even more intense during the health crisis.
It said these declines will create a “Simpson's Paradox,” where the average price in every province will experience a larger year-over-year increase than the national average because sales will shift away from the most expensive provincial markets.
The association expects the average home price will rise by 19.3 per cent on an annual basis to hit $677,775 this year and then edge up by less than one per cent to reach $681,500 in 2022.
The highest average home prices are expected in B.C., where CREA forecasts they will reach $883,781 in 2021 and 896,304 in 2022.
Ontario will trail close behind with an average price of $859,533 this year and $887,031 next.
The most affordable housing will be found in Newfoundland and Labrador, where homes will sell for an average $272,964 in 2021 and $279,937 in 2022.
Adil Dinani, a B.C. agent with Royal LePage West Real Estate Services, isn't surprised by the forecasts based on what he sees in his area.
“While the market has stabilized and we're no longer seeing rapid price growth, we're still very much in a seller's market,” he said.
“There's still a shortage of quality inventory and that's across all segments ... until that narrative changes, we're going to see prices hold.”
The national average price of a home sold in May was a little over $688,000, up 38.4 per cent from $497,189 during the same month last year.
When the Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto areas are removed from that calculation, the average price sank by nearly $140,000, CREA said.
The average price in May was $1,179,831 in Greater Vancouver alone and $1,108,462 in the GTA.
Across the entire country, the association said the number of new listings fell 6.4 per cent to 74,466 in May, down from 79,572 in April.
Listings were down in about 70 per cent of markets with the Halifax-Dartmouth region seeing a 32.4 per cent decline compared to April, the biggest drop seen across the country.
The smallest decreases were in Greater Vancouver, Saskatoon, Regina, Trois-Rivieres and Sherbrooke, which were down by less than one per cent each.
On a sales-to-new listings basis, BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic said the tightest markets remain in cottage country areas like the Okanagan in B.C. and Kawartha Lakes in Ontario.
He attributed the cooling materializing nationally to a combination of buyer fatigue, five-year fixed mortgage rates edging up, policy measures like the bump in the mortgage qualification rate and the stampede out of out larger cities that Canada saw as companies increasingly allowed remote work.
“Home sales have backed off from extreme levels seen in recent months, but current activity is still historically strong and fostering outsized price growth,” Kavcic wrote in a note to investors.
“We believe that sales activity will continue to gradually cool in the year ahead, but it's going to take higher interest rates to soften the market in a meaningful way.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 15, 2021.
Almost two-thirds of Canadians feel that inflation at the grocery store is getting worse, a new poll suggests, even as food inflation has been steadily cooling.
Norway, Ireland and Spain said on Wednesday they are recognizing a Palestinian state, in a historic but largely symbolic move that deepens Israel’s isolation more than seven months into its grinding war against Hamas in Gaza.
Ticks are parasitic bloodsuckers, capable of spreading deadly disease, and they’re becoming increasingly common. Here’s what you need to know about them.
Donald Trump had spent weeks needling U.S. President Joe Biden for his refusal to commit to a debate. But Washington political columnist Eric Ham describes how in one fell swoop, Biden ingeniously stole the issue from the Trump campaign and made it his own.
Barbie dolls will honour Canadian soccer star Christine Sinclair and tennis champion Venus Williams, plus seven other athletes as part of a project announced by Mattel on Wednesday.
An Ontario mother lost $2,500 to a scammer pretending to be her daughter asking for help in late April.
A Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
From artificial intelligence running wild to collapsing ecosystems, a new Canadian government report outlines 35 disruptions that could rattle the country in the near future.
In his latest column for CTVNews.ca, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair argues that if there's an unofficial frontrunner in the eventual race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, it has to be former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
A Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
Public libraries in Atlantic Canada are now lending a broader range of items.
Flashes of purple darting across the sky mixed with the serenading sound of songs will be noticed more with spring in full force in Manitoba.
Catching 'em all with impressive speed, a 7-year-old boy from Windsor, Ont. who only started his competitive Pokémon journey seven months ago has already levelled up to compete at a world championship level.
A sanctuary dedicated to animals with disabilities is celebrating the third birthday of one of its most popular residents.
2b Theatre recently moved into the old Video Difference building, seeking to transform it into an artistic hub, meeting space, and temporary housing unit for visiting performers in Halifax.
A B.C. woman says her service dog pulled her from a lake moments before she had a seizure, saving her life.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.