That's a red flag
The headline is even worse than it looks.
Last January, new Canadian mortgage rules came into effect that made buyers qualify at 200 bps above the quoted interest rate. It led to a drop in home sales nationwide.
So the January number was already against a soft comparable and still fell 39%.
Prices were down just 4.5% y/y but it's starting to look like a lot of would-be sellers will be cutting prices soon. The average benchmark selling price of a single-family detached home fell 9.1% y/y to $1.453m.
Another possible factor is Huawei. CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver and is under house arrest there. She owns a home there like many wealthy Chinese. The arrest may have triggered a buyers strike from China, or at least cooled demand.
Even for her, the media likes to play up the C$5.6m 'mansion' she lives in but all it does is illustrate how ridiculous house prices have gotten in Vancouver (pictured above).
You can see the home on Google Streetview. It's located in a (formerly?) middle class area and the neighbours are old 3-bedroom bungalows.
