Sean MacKay

Looking ahead to 2021, momentum in the condo market will keep building as buyers are reeled in by lower prices compared to the single-family home market, where prices are soaring and bidding wars are commonplace.

Home prices will continue rising rapidly across broad swaths of Canada in 2021 as low housing supply forces buyers into fierce bidding wars.

Vancouver homebuyers capped off an unprecedented year by going gangbusters in the final month of 2020, breaking the December record for home sales by a significant margin.

While some forecasters appeared certain earlier in 2020 that Canadian home prices would eventually suffer price declines amid persistently high unemployment and a slow economic recovery, there’s little sign that falling prices are imminent in 2021.

While roaring detached home sales and skyrocketing prices have stolen the lion’s share of the headlines in recent months, it now appears that condos are mounting a comeback, at least when it comes to sales activity.

In December, during what’s typically a quiet month for homebuyer activity, 20 suburban communities saw detached home prices rise over 20 percent compared to the same period in 2019. That’s up, slightly, from the 19 suburbs that saw price gains reach that level in November.

Home sales for the entire year also posted strong annual growth, up over eight percent from 2019’s total, despite the significant slowdown in activity through the spring months of the pandemic.

Despite the tighter measures put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Vancouver home buyers scooped up a record number of properties during what’s typically a quiet period for housing activity in December.

If this forecast materializes, the average price of a Vancouver home would be $1,262,600 by the end of the year, up from $1,158,400 at the end of 2020.

Rentals.ca found that rent prices dropped across all property types in the Toronto region, with condo rentals seeing the largest annual decline at 17.7 percent.