In new data released on Wednesday, CREA says housing sales were down 5.8% in January, month over month, on a national basis

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is blaming Old Man Winter as a factor in cool housing sales during the month of January.

In new data released on Wednesday, CREA says housing sales were down 5.8% in January, month over month, on a national basis.

Shaun Cathcart, the organization’s senior economist, told CBC News the slow January was particularly acute in parts of Ontario, a province that saw some rough winter weather that month.

The numbers came in weaker than we thought, but it’s all concentrated in central and southwestern Ontario, right along the path of that storm that hit around the third week in January, Cathcart said in an interview.

The effect on housing transactions wasn’t particularly surprising given many people “couldn’t get to the end of their driveway for a week” at one point, Cathcart said.

For Hamilton-area real estate agent Joe Ferrante, frigid and stormy weather was likely a factor in keeping buyers at home instead of going to house showings last month, but not the main reason for less activity.

He said the decrease in transactions was likely an “extension” of the cool market of late 2025.

The year ended slow and soft and it just carried right into January, said Ferrante, a broker for Royal Lepage State Realty, in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Yet Cathcart said the CREA doesn’t see a reason to alter its 2026 forecast just because January was a sub-par month.

Unless we get another two-foot snowstorm in the most populated part of Canada, our forecast is for things to improve, Cathcart said.

The CREA said Canada had roughly 4.9 months of housing inventory available for sale at the end of January, roughly in line with the long-term average of five months of inventory.

This is the metric the CREA uses to measure market balance, where a lower ratio would indicate a sellers’ market and a higher ratio would point toward a buyers’ market.

Cathcart said some buyers may be waiting for lower interest rates to come into effect, but he said there’s no indication rates are about to change.

The Bank of Canada dropped its key interest rate to 2.25% at the end of October, but has not adjusted it since.

Cathcart said first-time buyers may face challenges in entering the market, given the combination of prices they face and the available mortgage rates.

Affordability is still going to be a challenge, said Cathcart.