Canada's Home Price Index Rose in July for the First Time Since November 2024

The MLS Home Price Index edged up 0.1% in July, its first monthly gain in 20 months, as sales climbed for a fourth month and inventory tightened to 4.7 months.

The Canadian Real Estate Association reported on 18 August 2026 that its MLS Home Price Index rose 0.1% month over month in July. The size of the move is trivial; the fact of it is not. This is the first monthly increase since November 2024, ending a twenty-month sequence of declines. On an annual basis the index is still down 3.3%, but that is the smallest year-over-year drop since October 2025.

Four months of rising sales, three months of falling listings

Sales rose 0.5% from June, a fourth consecutive monthly gain, though they remain 5.3% below July 2025 on an unadjusted basis. New listings fell 1.6%, the third straight decline. Those two lines moving in opposite directions are what produced the price result. Months of inventory dropped to 4.7, the lowest reading of 2026 and below the long-term average of 5.0. The sales-to-new-listings ratio stood at 51.3% against a long-run average of 54.7% — balanced, no longer buyer-dominated.

A national average that hides three different markets

The national average price was C$674,819, up 0.2% year on year. Underneath it, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador remain at the edge of seller's-market conditions, while Ontario and British Columbia's Lower Mainland have moved from buyer's markets to balanced. Those are the two regions that drove the national index down for most of the past two years, so their stabilisation is doing most of the work in the July figure.

The constraint a foreign buyer runs into first

Glopra's Canadian snapshot of 17 August 2026 shows a national average of $4,320 per square metre, 3.6% lower over twelve months and 6.1% lower over five years, on a gross rental yield of 5.72% and a price-to-income ratio of 7.5. The bubble score of 45 sits in the moderate band — a considerable move from where Canada ranked in 2022. The 3.6% Glopra reading and CREA's −3.3% describe the same downturn on different bases and both point the same way.

The practical issue for an international buyer is that this turn is largely unavailable to them. Canada's prohibition on residential purchases by non-residents runs to 2027, with narrow exemptions. Standardised transaction costs of 10.6% and an effective rental tax rate of 20.7% on Glopra's non-resident case further shorten the list of scenarios in which a foreign purchase pencils out. The July data marks a possible floor in Canadian prices; for most cross-border investors it marks a floor they cannot buy at yet.

One month is one month

A 0.1% monthly move is well within the range that revisions and seasonal adjustment can erase. CREA's own framing is cautious, and the annual index remains negative. What would confirm the turn is a second and third month of the same combination — rising sales, falling new listings, inventory below the long-term average — rather than the price line itself.

Sources: Canadian Real Estate Association, national statistics release (18 Aug 2026) https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/08/18/3346632/0/en/canadian-home-sales-climb-again-in-july.html; CREA statistics portal https://stats.crea.ca/en-ca/

Market data: Canada