While prices have dipped in the last couple of years, buying a home in Canada remains expensive. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, the average selling price was $699,117 in May, down 4% from the same period last year.
However, it remains a seller’s market across the country. The average price for a home in May 2019 was nearly $508,000. That means values have risen more than 37.6% over the past five years. There may be some reason for optimism, as CREA pointed out that the Bank of Canada dropped interest rates to 4.75% last month. Further cuts may also be in the works.
With the Stanley Cup playoffs finally over, OntarioBets.com took some time away from tracking Ontario sports betting to watch the country’s housing markets. We wanted to identify what metro areas in Canada are the most popular cities for homebuyers in 2024. To do this, we used search data from Relator.ca and the population change found on Wikipedia to come up with a scoring system to rank the areas in which house hunters in Canada are the most in demand.
Rank | City, Province | Total Score |
1 | Kelowna, BC | 237 |
2 | London, ON | 231 |
3 | Kitchener, ON | 227 |
4 | Sylvan Lake, AB | 222 |
5 | Nanaimo, BC | 216 |
T6 | Guelph, ON | 215 |
T6 | Halifax, NS | 215 |
8 | Kamloops, BC | 212 |
9 | Calgary, AB | 210 |
10 | Vancouver, BC | 209 |
The top community for homebuyers according to our measurements is Kelowna, British Columbia. But Ontario has no shortage of options.
Three communities rank high on our list in the land of Ontario online casinos. The three Ontario cities in our top 10 includes London, the province’s fastest-growing city. Now home to more than 420,000 people, London saw its population increase by more than 10% between the 2016 and 2021 census periods. London, in southern Ontario, is roughly equidistant between Toronto and the Windsor-Detroit areas; both are about 200 kilometres away.
Even with the population boom, housing prices have cooled significantly over the past couple of years. According to Nesto.ca, the average price for a single-family home in London was $843,100 in February 2022, more than double the cost three years earlier. The average was $653,800 in May.
Kitchener, roughly 100 km west of Toronto, is another fast-growing area. Statistics Canada reported in May that the city grew by 7% in 2023 and is now home to more than 300,000 people. According to WOWA.ca, the average home price there is more than $818,500.
Guelph is smaller than Kitchener, but it’s also experiencing a growth spurt. Just east of Kitchener, Guelph now has a population of more than 155,000, an increase of nearly 30,000 in just 12 years. World Population Review says it’s Canada’s fifth-fastest growing town.
Housing costs there reflect the city’s growth. According to CREA, the average home sold for $914,623 in May. While that’s down significantly from the $1.1 million average fetching price in early 2022, it’s still up about $300,000 from what houses cost there in the summer of 2019.
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Author
Steve is an accomplished, award-winning reporter with more than 20 years of experience covering gaming, sports, politics and business. He has written for the Associated Press, Reuters, The Louisville Courier Journal, The Center Square and numerous other publications. Based in Louisville, Ky., Steve has covered the expansion of sports betting in the U.S. and other gaming matters. He shares his expertise on OntarioBets, among other sites.
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