With sales up and listings down, the average home price in Canada has posted another increase.

The average price in January 2022 rose to $748,450, representing a 21 percent annual increase compared to the same month last year.

In December 2021, the national average home price was $713,500.

This means that the average price rose month-over-month in January 2022 by almost five percent or 4.89 percent.

The Canadian Real Estate Association has reported that sales “remained historically high” last month.

National home sales “edged up” one percent from December 2021 to January 2022.

Meanwhile, listings of homes on the market registered a double-digit drop of 11 percent from December 2021 to last month.

In its report Tuesday (February 15), CREA noted that the sales-to-new listings ratio “shot to 89.4% compared to 78.7% in December”.

“This was the second-highest level on record for this measure, only slightly below the record 90.2% set last January,” the association stated.

CREA pointed out that the long-term average for the national sales-to-new listings ratio is 55 percent.

In another measure, the association reported that the home price index or HPI “rose a record 2.9% month-over-month and was up a record 28% year-over-year”.

CREA chair Cliff Stevenson stated that January was “pretty quiet on the new listings side of things”.

Stevenson noted that a surge in supply is “unlikely to emerge until the weather starts to warm up a bit”.

“The question is will that supply be overwhelmed by demand as it was last spring, or will we start to see the re-emergence of some of the many would-be sellers who have been hunkered down for the last two years?” the CREA chair asked.

“Either way it is shaping up to be another interesting year for the housing market,” Stevenson added.

In 2021, home sales across Canada totaled 666,995 units, setting a new best record.

Sales in 2021 surpassed the previous annual record set in 2020 by more than 20 percent.