'Roller-coaster' housing market in Halifax may be coming to an end

One of the country's largest real estate firms is predicting a less volatile market for Halifax homebuyers in 2025.

"This past five-year period we definitely rode the roller-coaster along with the rest of the major cities across Canada," said Matt Honsberger, president of Royal LePage Atlantic. "I very much expect that we'll see as normal a market as we've seen in many years in 2025."

Honsberger called the past few years "unconventional," marked by a "very, very high trading volume" of between 8,200 and 8,600 annual purchases, followed by half that number in 2023.

"It will be nice to have one again, which I think we'll see in '25, with that normal 6,000 trades," he said.

The Royal LePage survey, which provides year-over-year price expectations for Canada's 10 most prominent real estate markets, forecasts the price of homes in the Halifax area to increase between one and five per cent over the next year.

The company noted, "the aggregate price of a home in Halifax is set to increase by four per cent to $532,064."

The company predicts the median price for a single-family detached home will increase five per cent to $605,745, and condo prices will rise one per cent to $423,291.

National increases

Nationally, homes are expected to increase in value between 3.5 per cent for condos to seven per cent for single-family detached homes.

In the past five years, home price increases in Halifax have fluctuated between 19.4 per cent for bungalows in 2021 to -2.7 per cent for single-family detached homes last year.

Honsberger said the high rents in Halifax are helping nudge people into the market.

"As you see [interest] rates start to come down a little bit and rents not necessarily following suit, as soon as you can get together that down payment, it makes more sense," said Honsberger, who suggested some mortgage payments might be less than rent. "As that gap closes, a lot of people make the decision to start to buy."

He said homes priced less than $600,000 are the ones moving right now — to first-time buyers.

"Despite the fact that we have more expensive inventory on the market right now, the stuff that's coming on that's sort of more entry level … that's what's still moving right now," he said.

The federal Liberals have changed the country's mortgage rules to allow first-time buyers to lengthen the amortization period from 25 to 30 years. The change takes effect Dec. 15, but Honsberger isn't convinced it will have a major impact in the Atlantic region.

"Certainly that helps get more people into the market, but I would argue that's a little bit more a product of what's needed in Toronto and Vancouver where the average price is double what it is here," said Honsberger, who is more worried about the impact of other political machinations south of the border, including U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs on Canadian goods.

"A 25 per cent tariff on goods crossing the border could change employment and population trends," said Honsberger. "If the Bank of Canada has to pivot based on what the U.S. dollar is doing, then we might see some changes there."