The Canadian Real Estate Association says national home sales have declined.

In a report Tuesday (April 19), CREA noted that sales in March 2022 fell 16.3 percent from the same month last year.

For context, March 2021 set the all-time best record for any month in history, with 76,259 residential properties changing hands in that month.

Robert Kavcic of BMO Economics made a point about this in a post about CREA’s latest statistics.

“Keep in mind that last March was the absolute summit of the pandemic demand mountain, so the reported year-over-year drop is somewhat exaggerated,” Kavcic wrote about the March 2021 record.

“Indeed, even after these declines, the level of sales was still running 34% above pre-COVID (2019 average) norms,” the BMO economist noted.

“That tells you how heated the demand side of the market really was,” Kavcic wrote.

But there’s something coming.

As Kavcic stated, “That said, we purposely use past tense here because there are signs that the appetite is pulling back amid higher mortgage rates, and the decline in March might be the first in a longer series of softening trends.”

TD Economics posted its own take on the CREA report.

“Part of March's sales decline probably reflects buyer fatigue to some degree following several months of robust activity, as buyers pulled forward their purchases ahead of higher rates,” TD economist Rishi Sondhi wrote.

Sondhi was referring to the March and April 2022 rate hikes announced by the Bank of Canada.

The central bank is anticipated to continue raising its interest-setting rates into the year and 2023.

One hears from time to time the phrase “buyer fatigue”, especially when the housing market is hot.

Buyer fatigue simply means that prospective purchasers are withdrawing from the market for a variety of reasons.

In a competitive market marked by multiple offers for a property, this phenomenon happens when buyers are outbid many times by others, leaving them disheartened.

TD’s Sondhi used the phrase twice in the economist’s April 19 post.

“While buyer's fatigue likely played a role in cooling sales in March, interest rates also increased quite significantly,” Sondhi wrote.

“And, with the Bank of Canada set to hike rates aggressively, home sales are likely to trend even lower moving forward. This should help balance the market and weigh on home price growth,” Sondhi stated.

In its April 19 report, CREA noted that March 2022 sales also represented a 5.4 percent month-over-month decline from February.

The decline in home sales did not translate to greater affordability.

CREA reported that that the aggregate home price index rose one percent on a month-over-month in March 2022.

Compared to the market peak of March 2021, last month’s price index was up by 27.1 percent on a year-over-year basis.

As for the national average home price in March 2022, the number rose to $796,000, up 11.2 percent compared to March 2021.