(CEP News) Ottawa – The Canadian housing market slowed significantly in the first six months of 2008 compared to same period last year, according to figures released Thursday by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).The number of existing home sales in the first half of 2008 was down 13.1% compared to the same period last year, the CREA report showed, with a seasonally adjusted 181,716 houses sold through the multiple listing service (MLS) between January and June.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, dollar volume was valued at $36.0 billion in the second quarter, down 3.1% quarter-over-quarter, CREA reported. This was the fourth quarterly decline since dollar volume peaked one year ago. In June, the seasonally adjusted dollar value of MLS sales edged 0.2% higher on a month-over-month basis to $12.0 billion.

For the January-June period, the MLS residential average price rose 3.6% year-over-year to $313,610. On a quarterly basis, the average price was $315,760 in the second quarter, up 1.8% from the second quarter of 2007. In June, the national average price held steady on a year-over-year basis at $314,028.

New listings continued to outpace sales in the first half of 2008, hitting a record 518,270 units in the first six months of the year, up 9.6% from the previous record set in the same period last year. This is the first time in any six-month period that new listings topped half a million units, CREA reported.

For the fourth time in four months, seasonally adjusted new MLS residential listings topped 75,000 units in June 2008.

By Geoff Matthews, gmatthews@economicnews.ca, edited by Sarah Sussman, ssussman@economicnews.ca

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