December is traditionally a slow month for home sales in Canada, and a new report from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) shows December 2025 followed the trend, with national sales dropping 2.7% from November.
Total sales across the country hit 470,314 homes in 2025, down 1.9% from 2024’s total, during a year when buyers moved to the sidelines in the first quarter due to US tariffs and then returned to markets mid-year, but went back to the sidelines to end 2025 , says Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist.
“There doesn’t appear to have been much rhyme or reason to the month-over month decline in home sales in December, which was simply the result of coincident but seemingly unrelated slowdowns in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal,” says Cathcart.
“For that reason, it would be prudent for market observers to resist the temptation to trace a line from the end of 2025 into 2026. Rather, we continue to expect sales to move higher again as we get closer to the spring, rejoining the upward trend that was observed throughout the spring, summer, and early fall of last year.”
Cathcart said December’s 'highlights' include a 2% drop in new listings from November; a 0.3% drop in the home price index from November and a 4% drop, year-over-year; and a sales drop of 4.5% from December 2024.
“New supply declined by 2% on a month-over-month basis in December, marking a fourth straight monthly drop,” says Cathcart. “Combined with a slightly larger decrease in sales activity in December, the sales-to-new listings ratio eased to 52.3% compared to 52.7% in November.”
The national supply of homes for sale at the end of December 2025 reached 133,495 properties, up 7.4% from a year earlier but 9.9% below the long -term average.
“Inventories have been falling since May 2025 owing to the mid-year rally in demand, meaning active listings could be back posting year-over-year declines around the time this year’s spring market gets going,” says Cathcart.
“While we remain in the quiet time of year for a little while longer, the spring market is now just around the corner, and it is expected to benefit from four years of pent-up demand, and interest rates that at this point are about as good as they are going to get,” says Valérie Paquin, CREA chair.
“Barring any further major uncertainty-causing events, that means we should see a more active market this year.”
There were 4.5 months of inventory on a national basis at the end of December 2025, up slightly from 4.4 months, where the measure had been since August.
“The long-term average for this measure of market balance is five months of inventory,” says Cathcart, “Based on the measure of one standard deviation above and below that long -term average, a seller’s market would be below 3.6 months, and a buyer’s market would be above 6.4 months.”
“The month-over-month drop in the home price index was similar to the dip recorded in November and could reflect some sellers making price concessions in order to sell properties before the end of the year,” added Cathcart. “The national average home price was $673,335 in December 2025, virtually unchanged from December 2024.”
