Potential BoC rate hikes loom over Canada’s housing market outlook
Amid the current economic uncertainty, that doesn’t appear to be the case, according to Royal LePage president and chief executive officer Phil Soper (pictured top). He told Canadian Mortgage Professional that would-be buyers still appear to prefer sitting on the sidelines because they’re nervous about the US-Canada trade war and rising inflation.
“You’d expect with lots of chatter about rate increases in Canada online bubbling through communities – plus the recent significant rise in fixed-rate mortgages in the United States – that there’d be some pull-ahead in activity,” Soper said. “You’d see some people that were planning to get into the market in the spring of 2027, for example, jumping in now to get ahead of anticipated higher borrowing costs.
“Yet we’re not seeing material changes in the trajectory of transaction volumes. It’s very flat. And what that says to me is even an incentive like that is not enough to get people off the sidelines if they’re feeling very uncomfortable.”
Soper: Fundamentals in place for healthy market, but Canadians remain nervous
Royal LePage now expects a more modest pace of national 2026 home price growth than it first anticipated. In its second-quarter house price survey, the real estate firm said prices would likely jump by 2% by Q4 – but it’s revised that to 1%, reflecting the deep freeze that still grips the market.
Major markets including Toronto and Vancouver saw prices continue to slide in the second quarter, according to Royal LePage, although other cities including Montreal bucked the national trend.
