CREA Cuts Its 2026 Sales Forecast Again: What 5.2% Fewer Sales Means

The Canadian Real Estate Association now expects 444,530 homes to change hands across Canada in 2026. That's 5.2% fewer than in 2025, and about 4.1% below what CREA itself was predicting in July. Yet the average home that sold in August 2026 went for $668,219, up 0.6% from a year earlier.

Sales slipped and prices barely moved. Read together, those two numbers tell you more than either headline. A sales forecast counts how many people decided to move. It says little about what your home is worth or what your next one will cost. If you're thinking about moving up, selling, or adding a rental property, this forecast is mostly telling you two things: buyers have more time and room to negotiate, and the decision that matters most is whether your own cash flow can carry the plan.

Why sales fall before prices do

Most homeowners don't have to sell. Many locked in very low rates in 2020 and 2021 and are now renewing at noticeably higher payments. Giving up a cheap mortgage to buy something else usually means borrowing more at today's rates, so a lot of them simply stay put. Sellers who do list tend to anchor to what the neighbour got last year, and they're slow to accept less.

Buyers are holding back too. The Bank of Canada cut rates through 2024 and 2025, but changes in rates typically take 6-18 months to show up fully in housing, and many buyers have waited longer than forecasters expected. When fewer sellers meet fewer buyers, the count of sales drops while prices hold roughly where they were. CREA's own monthly data shows the drift: national sales edged down 0.7% from one month to the next in its September release.

The number worth watching is inventory. In August 2026, national inventory sat at 4.8 months of sales. Picture every listing on the market selling at the current pace with nothing new added: it would take almost five months to clear them. That leaves time to book inspections, ask questions and negotiate conditions, none of which buyers could count on during the 2021 bidding wars.

What a slower market gives you

For a move-up buyer, the biggest gift is time. You can line up financing before you list, negotiate a subject-to-sale condition, or plan a bridge loan carefully instead of under pressure. In Manitoba, home prices sit lower relative to incomes than in Ontario or British Columbia, and the local market has historically swung less than the national average. A 5% national drop in sales doesn't necessarily mean the same shift where you live.

Investors face a tighter picture. Rentals.ca reported national asking rents down 4.2% year over year in September 2026. That cuts straight into the numbers on any rental purchase. If a property only works at last year's rents, it doesn't work. On the other side, as more owners hit renewal at higher payments, some will need to sell. A buyer with cash ready and clean terms can solve a real problem for that seller, and price is only one part of that conversation.

The plan that holds in any forecast

Most economists expect the Bank of Canada's long-run neutral rate, the level that neither speeds up nor slows down the economy, to settle above where it sat before the pandemic. Flat prices and moderate rates for several years are a reasonable planning case. In that setting, wealth gets built through how your debt is structured and what your monthly cash flow can absorb.

For owners with good equity, that can mean gradually converting non-deductible mortgage debt into tax-deductible investment borrowing through the Smith Manoeuvre™. A strategy like that runs on decades, and it works the same whether 2026 closes at 444,530 sales or a few thousand more. It carries real investment risk and needs proper advice, and it doesn't depend on calling the bottom.

Before you act on any forecast, ask one question of your own plan: could you comfortably carry it if prices stayed flat and rates stayed where they are for the next five years?