The median home price is $776,400. Here’s what that buys across Canada

Open this photo in gallery:

It’s a little misleading to ask what the average home costs in Canada: there are so many types, markets and submarkets that the answer makes little statistical sense. Still, the Canadian Real Estate Association does its best with a measure called the National Composite MLS Home Price Index, which tries to suss out where the market overall is going by looking at sales and listings from real estate boards across the country. The latest figures from June show four months of slowly deflating home prices, but they also set a benchmark of $776,400 for single-family detached homes prices across the country.

CREA’s numbers show these types of homes are still historically quite expensive, but still lower than when the pandemic-era boom rocketed prices to a peak of $951,200 in 2022. Since then, the trend has been down to the point where CREA’s national numbers say these homes are now about 18 per cent lower than their peak.

Not all markets are created equal though: some are still seeing prices marching upwards while others have properties available at a relative bargain. Here’s what you’d find if you took that national benchmark and applied it to local markets across the country.

British Columbia

Open this photo in gallery:

While there are undeveloped lots for sale in Greater Vancouver for under $800,000 (although in the case of the two currently for sale in Burnaby, there’s literally a cargo rail track in your front yard) you have drive about an hour away to Maple Ridge to find something like a livable detached house (such as a 1,000-square foot, three-bedroom bungalow at 12121 228 St.)

For something near national benchmark price you’re better off searching B.C.’s vast interior, which is one of the more affordable single family markets in the province with a June single family benchmark of $802,200, down 7.9 per cent from the peak it hit in April, 2022 ($866,200).

For example, for $779,900 you could get 610 Muir Rd. on the less-developed western side of Lake Okanagan. It’s a relatively new-build home finished in 2019, with four bedrooms and about 2,100 square feet of living space. There is also has a three-car garage and a huge deck (and second-floor balcony) looking into the forests of Fintry Provincial Park just behind.

Open this photo in gallery:

Its location – almost equidistant between Vernon and Kelowna – contributes to its relative affordability. “If that house was right in the city it would be substantially more money; You save money by driving a bit every day,” said listing agent Gord Heighton, realtor with RE/MAX Vernon Salt Fowler. According to him, most of the buyers in the area come from the Lower Mainland, or like himself, from Alberta.

“We get a lot of people relocating around town, upsizing or downsizing. They come here and buy their house for cash,” said Mr. Heighton. “We’re still not, like, cheap; but compared to Toronto and Vancouver we are.”

Prairies

Open this photo in gallery:

Alberta is one of the few provinces that didn’t see huge swings upward during the pandemic that then retrenched. The province as a whole has seen 38 per cent growth since the end of 2019. But the average single family home prices of $522,200 is still well below the national figure. That means in the most expensive market – Calgary, where prices sit around $694,000 – you can get a lovely single-story bungalow or split level on a modest lot near Nose Hill Park for under $780,000.

Meanwhile, Edmonton is still among the more affordable large-city markets in the country with a detached benchmark price of $505,300. For $775,000 you could have 7604 157 Ave. NW, a 3,200-square-foot, three-bedroom home that backs onto one of the city’s man-made stormwater lakes. The listing agent, Paul Afonso, with MaxWell Progressive, is more of a builder and entrepreneur but is listing the home for a friend. He said the house dates from the late eighties and has had a few renovations since. Among the newer features are a wine cellar, an indoor hot-tub, a curving wooden staircase and a huge solarium off the kitchen that looks out into the lake. There’s a vented barbecue and wood-burning stove to help make it through those long Edmonton winters.

Ontario

Open this photo in gallery:

Compared to the Prairies, Ontario’s single-family homes grew an anemic 12.4 per cent from $793,000 in 2019 to $891,900 in June. That doesn’t tell the whole story of course: it’s also the province that saw some of the fastest swings upward and corrections backward of the pandemic.

The big caveat for the province is that “Greater Toronto” is one of the most expensive markets in the country (its $1.2-million benchmark price is second only to Greater Vancouver with $1.9-million). It’s worth noting there’s a big different between the “Greater” and the city of Toronto. Inside the city boundary the average detached home sold for $1.64-million in June, according to statistics from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. In Toronto, you could find a 700-square-foot detached worker’s cottage built in the postwar period for under $800,000, but there aren’t a lot of family-sized options at that price.

Outside of Greater Toronto and Hamilton there’s quite a few regions where the single family prices are lower than the national number. In the Barrie-Simcoe area, prices are 21 per cent off their 2022 peak (from just over $1-million to $808,300), in Hamilton they are 25 per cent down (from $1.15-million to $864,100) while Kitchener-Waterloo has dropped 26 per cent (from $1.094-million to $805,600). Bargain hunters should note the K-W deals are still relative: the detached prices are still 40 per cent higher than they were in 2019.

Open this photo in gallery:

For $770,000 you could get a charming three-bedroom brick house in downtown Kitchener at 32 Ellen St. E. The two-storey building is more than 127 years old but has been lovingly updated and maintained with some fanciful additions to the exterior; a motif of stars has been added to the porch and the paved rear yard and patio, perhaps in homage to K-W’s premier performance venue (Centre in the Square) that’s across the street. Inside there’s a lot of personality expressed with hand-painted decorations on everything from kitchen cabinets and furnishings to doorway casings and trim. According to listing agent Alina Telescu with Red and White Realty Inc., rumour has it a host of notable locals have lived there over the years.

Quebec

Open this photo in gallery:

Detached homes have also been on a fairly steady rise in Quebec, up 47 per cent from the end of 2019 to June’s $600,200 benchmark. Even so the province’s most expensive market, the Montreal area, sees its benchmark price still well below the national figure at $684,800. There are plenty of options for a detached house at the national benchmark: closer to the city centre, they might be a little smaller or on eccentric lots. If you move toward the suburbs, you start to find larger properties with more land.

For $779,000 you could get a two-storey, split-level home in the West Island area known as DDO or Dollard-des-Ormeaux at 14355 Rue Meadowvale. This part of the city is 95-per-cent Anglophone, according to listing agent Nabil Rougui, with Group Sutton-Performer Inc., and looks a lot like many Canadian suburbs that began to spring up in the 1960s.

This house has four bedrooms spread across about 1,200 square feet, as well as a finished basement, and features a two-car garage and an in-ground pool in the backyard. While not the biggest house in Montreal in the most fashionable neighbourhood, it’s still closer to the higher end of the market than the bottom. As sales slow and the market tips away from sellers towards favouring buyers, Mr. Rougui said he’s increasingly having the conversation with clients about how much bigger their next house has to be? “They say ‘I want that big one because my cousin has a big house,’” he said. “If it were cars, it would be ‘You need a Honda Civic.’ But people want that BMW or Mercedes: the difference between the need and the want comes into play.”

Atlantic provinces

Open this photo in gallery:

The price growth in New Brunswick from 2019 is nothing short of remarkable with prices almost doubling (up 94 per cent) from $169,500. In comparison, Newfoundland looks sluggish with just 44 per cent growth from $226,400 over the same period. When comparing the detached homes in the largest cities, Halifax’s $584,200 price leads all other Maritimes cities and keeps Nova Scotia the most expensive of the eastern provinces. That’s compared to $405,100 figure in St. John’s on the Rock and $343,300 in Saint John.

To find a house near the national benchmark take a look in the Moncton area (N.B.’s priciest local market) for properties like 160 Boundary Dr.: This 3,000-square-foot, three-storey home (with attached three-car garage) sits on a 2.1-acre lot, in an area known as Rural Estates that has a bunch of other large houses on acreage, all hidden from each other in a thickly wooded area. The last time this home sold in 2019 the price was $366,500, meaning it’s more than doubled in value.

“It was usually people from Ontario that would buy these during COVID,” said listing agent Rickey Côté, with Exit Realty Associates, who saw lots of folks cash out of homes in Central Canada and bring buckets of money to buyer cheaper property in his community. “I had one client sell his house in Ontario and bought three here; one for each of his daughters and one for himself,” he said. These days some of that Ontario money has had to leave, thanks to remote working policies withering away, and now the market is tilting more toward more moderate price growth even while home values remain higher than they had ever been historically. “It’s not going to double again in the next four years, but we were so far behind the rest of the country,” said Mr. Côté.

Open this photo in gallery:

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to replace an incorrect reference to the Maritimes, and to correctly refer to the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador as St. John's.