It might feel just like yesterday that we were lining up to buy toilet paper, banging pots and pans to support our healthcare workers, and spending our waking hours desperately trying to track down a reliable supply of N-95 masks. But it’s actually been half a decade since the COVID-19 pandemic first reared its ugly head.
Along with pretty much every other aspect of our daily lives, COVID-19 had a huge effect on Canada’s real estate markets. Some of those effects vanished almost as quickly as they appeared, but others are still very much with us today.
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’re taking a look back at some of the major trends and milestones across Canadian housing markets over the past five years, from the start of the pandemic until now—and offering a look ahead at how the long-term impacts of COVID-19 could continue to shape the future of Canadian housing for years to come.
2020: A year of uncertainty for housing
The first year of the pandemic was characterized by widespread uncertainty and anxiety in nearly every facet of the Canadian economy—including real estate.
As the whole world struggled to come to terms with the pandemic, the resulting economic uncertainty, government restrictions and lockdowns put a virtual freeze on real estate activity for the first part of the year.
Across the country, both home sales and prices posted record declines. Media coverage at the time whiplashed back and forth between doomsday scenarios and an anticipation of the inevitable recovery that would come once things got “back to normal.” New technologies like virtual tours allowed people to still see potential homes and continue along their buying journey.
“Like so many other parts of normal daily life, a lot of buying and selling activity in housing markets across Canada has been put on pause,” said Shaun Cathcart, Senior Economist at the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), in May 2020. “That said, preliminary data for May suggest things may have already started to pick up a bit for both sales and new listings.”
