AVERAGE HOUSE PRICE

Nova Scotia’s housing market blew up during the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, house prices and sales spiked. Things are cooling down now but the market is still holding strong. During the peak in 2021, houses were on the market just days before being sold. Statistically, in a typical market, houses sit on the market for 60 to 100 days. In 2019, prepandemic, the average was about 65 days; right now it’s 33 to 34 days.

The cooling of the market can also be seen in the number of sales, which is down about 20 percent compared with last year, but up two percent from 2019.

But Nova Scotia is one of two provinces where prices are expected to keep increasing.

According to data from NSAR, the average residential price in Nova Scotia is now $385,756. Halifax and Dartmouth remain the most expensive area of the province, with the average house price now topping half a million dollars.

As of the end of October, the average residential price in Halifax and Dartmouth was $417,503, up nearly 40 percent from 2020, when the average price was around $367,000.

“It wasn’t just the pandemic, there was a valuation correction so you’re not going to see prices go down. I think we’ve set a new benchmark and you’re not going to see the benchmark come down.”

Statistics Canada released new data today from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP) which provides insight into the household characteristics of property owners in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and British Columbia. Today’s release is the first of a three-part series that looks at the properties sold from January 1 to December 31, 2018, and the characteristics of their buyers.

The article provides insight into the geographic distribution, property type, sale price, and living area of properties sold. This information could also serve as a point of comparison to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the housing market.

The information provided in this article is focused on properties transacted as part of market sales, which are transactions where properties are sold in an arm's length transfer of ownership, that is, by unrelated parties.

Among the provinces with data available in this release, British Columbia had the highest share of properties sold out of the provincial residential property stock, comprising almost 8% of all properties in the province, followed by Nova Scotia (5.7%) and New Brunswick (5.2%).

Non-market sales of residential properties include sales to related parties or sales of special interest, forfeitures, and foreclosures. In 2018, New Brunswick (31.7%) had the highest share of non-market sales followed by Nova Scotia (29.1%) and British Columbia (24.5%).

In all three provinces, residential market sales were higher in the census metropolitan areas (CMA) compared with outside of CMAs. Nova Scotia had the largest difference with 5.3% of residential properties being sold in the Halifax CMA compared with 3.5% outside the CMA. Kelowna (7.8%) in British Columbia had the highest share of residential property sales among the CMAs of all three provinces.

While single-detached houses had the highest number of sales in all three provinces, these sales accounted for a smaller share of their respective stock when compared to other property types.

Semi-detached houses, row houses, and condominium apartments had the highest share of residential properties sold in all three provinces in 2018. The difference in sales was largest in New Brunswick where 10.1% of semi-detached houses were sold compared with 3.4% of single-detached houses.

In Nova Scotia, row houses (7.7%) had the highest share followed by condominium apartments at 7.4%. This is compared with 4.0% of single-detached houses that were sold in 2018.

The median price of properties sold was highest in British Columbia ($535,000) which was over three times that of Nova Scotia ($167,000) and almost four times the price in New Brunswick ($134,000). The price difference was most pronounced in vacant land properties. The median price of vacant properties in British Columbia was $220,000 compared with the median price of $25,000 in Nova Scotia and $15,000 in New Brunswick in 2018.

In Nova Scotia, condominium apartments had the highest median price at $215,000 compared with $192,000 for single-detached houses.

In 2018, properties sold in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had larger living areas compared with properties that were not sold. In Nova Scotia, the median living area of sold properties was 1,510 square feet (SF) compared to 1,350 of for properties that were not sold. Properties sold in the Halifax CMA had a median living area of 1,810 sf while properties not sold had a median living area of 1,670 sf.

In Nova Scotia, the price per square foot of sold properties was $125 per sf compared with $106 per SF for properties sold in New Brunswick.

The median price for properties sold within the Halifax CMA was $151 per sf while the median price for properties sold outside the CMA was $102 per sf.

The number of homes sold through the MLS® System of the Nova Scotia Association of REALTORS® totaled 831 units in November 2022. This was a sharp decrease of 28.7% from November 2021. Home sales were 17% below the five-year average and 2% below the 10-year average for the month of November.

Advocates in Nova Scotia are calling for more public housing to be built as the province grapples with an ongoing housing crisis.

The bulk of public housing in Nova Scotia was developed before the 1970s. After World War II, the federal government made major investments in public housing across the country, but by the 1990s, those investments largely disappeared.