DOWNGRADED 2024 Nova Scotia Real Estate Forecast!
Back in July, the Canadian Real Estate Association had the Canadian real estate prices for 2024 forecasted to rise by 3% and Nova Scotia was the highest forecast on this list at 8.1%. This was followed by Alberta at 6.8% PEI at 4.7%, New Brunswick at 3.
6%, and then it drops off to 3 % and under for every other province.
This forecasted, at 8.1% growth had us going from about $420,000, all the way up to $456,000 in 2024. But now, a few months later, the Canadian Real Estate Association has updated their housing market Outlook and we’re no longer on top of that list and they’ve made some major major changes to the numbers in terms of price points in 2024. CREA now has us forecasted that only a 2% growth year-over-year from 2023, and this would have us arriving at just about $427,000, and this 2% growth is still above what the Canadian average is forecasted to be at 1.
5%. And it’s interesting because the two real estate, juggernauts in Canada, BC and Ontario are set for pretty minimum growth with BC coming in at only a 1.2% forecasted growth and Ontario coming in at only a 0.2% forecasted growth for 2024. And even though our Price Forecast has been downgraded from 8.
1% to 2%, this still puts us at fifth on the list sitting behind Alberta at 4.8% growth, New Brunswick at 2.7% growth, NFLD at 2.6% growth and Quebec at 2.1% growth.
Now in terms of sales activity, which is the number of homes sold in Canada. The country is expected to rebound with 9% growth in the volume of sales in 2024, and this is downgraded from their midyear forecast, which was set at 11% growth in sales activity. In terms of the Nova Scotia sales, we’re forecasted to be second on the list in Canada at a 10.4% growth in sales activity next year – and this has us only behind Ontario who’s sitting at 10.8% for sales activity growth in 2024 and this number of 10.
4% growth is actually up from the previous forecast at the Midway point of the year, which had a sitting at 9.9% growth. From a national perspective, home sales have quieted down quite a bit after a pretty busy spring market, which I would consider is in line with a more normal year in the real estate market for a typical year. The real estate market would generally experience EBs and flows at different times of the year, so we’d have a pretty busy spring and then things would quiet down a little bit in the summer and then we’d usually see a big uptick in the fall, which we haven’t really seen this year. Yes, it’s still relatively busy, but not nearly as busy as it could be, and I would say that a big factor is due the rate hikes in June and July, which obviously severely affected affordability and consumer confidence across the country.
And this is a big reason why CREA has downgraded their forecast for 2024, because the sentiment out there is that rates are going to stay higher for longer and because of this they’ve downgraded their forecast in both price and sales growth going forward.
Obviously, one of the biggest factors in how the real estate market is going to play out in Atlantic Canada and across the country in 2024 is going to reflect what happens with the interest rates. Based on what I’m reading, most people are seeming to believe that we’re done with the rate hikes for now, or we might see one more between now and the spring, but they’re likely just to kind of stay put where things are at.
Yesterday, I listened to a presentation from an economist at CIBC, and his thoughts were that the Bank of Canada has already overcooked the rates and he expects them to start coming down at about the halfway point or the 3/4 point of 2024. But, only time will tell.
This will be a huge, huge factor in how the real estate market plays out next year. As a general statement, this forecast is mostly positive for the Atlantic provinces and other than Alberta, the Atlantic provinces are next in line in terms of price growth.
Forecasting in 2024, three of the four Atlantic provinces are forecasted to be above the average price growth of 1.5% and all of them are at the average or higher. At this point in the year, Nova Scotia year to date, up to the end of September, sales volume are down about 20.
5% year-over-year from 2022 to this year. In terms of price points, we’re up slightly at 1.5% growth, which puts us sitting right around $426,500. Personally, at this point, I would suggest that critics are a little bit low on their 2% forecast for 2024. I would expect this number to be more in the 3 to 4.
5% growth range year-over-year, which would have us sitting at about $439,000 to $446,500 as an average sale price in Nova Scotia in 2024. I would expect this to be anchored by our increased growth of population and simply the lack of supply. The amount of demand that we’re currently seeing in our Market will have a lot of upward pressure on pricing, especially if the rates start to adjust downward at the Midway point of 2024. I also feel, a lot of buyers will get off the fence and re-enter the housing market and currently in Nova Scotia we’re adding about 7.8 new people for every one unit of housing being built.
So, if you think this is going to slow down anytime soon, I would expect just the opposite and the truth is we don’t have enough housing currently for the people who are in our province and we’re continuing to add people at an alarming rate.
Share this with people who may be interested in being educated in the Halifax real estate market and until next time. Thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate your support and have a great day.
