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With housing inventory still at historic lows, home prices surged to a fresh record high in January.The average selling price in January reached $748,450, which is 1% higher from December and 21% higher compared to a year ago, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).Compared to pre-pandemic levels in January 2020, the MLS Home Price Index is now up a whopping 46.5%.Home sales were up slightly from a month ago at 55,043 sales, though that’s down nearly 11% from year-ago levels.CREA says a lack of new inventory is continuing to put upward pressure on prices.The number of months of inventory remained at its all-time low of 1.6 months, well below the longer-term average of five months.“The ideal situation between now and the summer would be that a huge surge of sellers come forward looking to sell in the spring 2022 market,” said Shaun Cathcart, senior economist at CREA. “If that were to occur, similar to 2021, we’d likely see a massive number of sales take place, which would get a lot of frustrated buyers into homeownership, and we’d likely see some cooling off on the price growth side if those offers are spread across more listings.”Removing the high-priced markets of the Greater Toronto and Vancouver areas, the average price stands at $588,450, which is $95,925 higher than a year ago.
