Six Canadian Cities Now Posting Home Price Drops

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Halifax used to be the market that made everyone else feel bad about themselves. While Toronto buyers were crying into their bidding-war losses and Vancouver condos were quietly bleeding value, Halifax just kept doing Halifax things: affordable, steady, quietly smug. Not anymore.

March 2026 data from the RPS-Wahi House Price Index has Halifax down 2% year over year, making it the sixth major Canadian city to tip into negative territory. The national index fell 3% annually in March, a full percentage point worse than the 2% declines recorded in January and February. More cities are now posting annual price drops than at any point in this correction cycle.

Six cities down. Seven still up. And the gap between those two groups is telling you something that the headline number alone doesn't.

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The Six That Are Bleeding

Victoria is the worst of the bunch, down 9% year over year in March. That's not a soft landing. That's a city that got ahead of itself during the pandemic, got drunk on remote-work demand, and is now working through the hangover. Hamilton is at -8%, Toronto at -7%, Vancouver at -5%, Ottawa at -3%, and Halifax bringing up the rear at -2%.

Look at that list. It's BC, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada. These are markets that saw the most aggressive price appreciation from 2020 to 2022, and they're the ones paying it back now.

Ottawa is the interesting outlier in that group. It's generally considered a steadier, more government-insulated market, less prone to the sharp swings that define the GTA or Metro Vancouver. It crossed into negative territory in February and was sitting at -3% by March. Not dramatic by the standards of this correction, but notable for a market that tends to be the boring one in the room.

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The Seven That Are Holding

Quebec City is up 12% annually. Montreal is up 9%. Saskatoon and Regina are at +2%, with Edmonton and Calgary each posting a modest +1%.

Calgary is the most useful case study in what a controlled deceleration actually looks like. It was Canada's hottest major housing market as recently as 2024, posting double-digit annual gains at its peak. Now it's at +1%, active listings are rising, and the bidding wars are mostly a memory. That's not a crash. That's the market taking a breath.

CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal described the broader picture bluntly earlier this spring: the "tale of two markets" that defined Canadian real estate over the past couple of years is narrowing. But not because BC and Ontario are recovering. Quebec and the Prairies are cooling to meet them. The gap is closing from the wrong end.

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The Part That Should Concern Buyers

For most of this correction, condos were the obvious villain. Every month, another headline about condo values cratering in Toronto and Vancouver while detached homes held relatively firm. If you owned a house, you were fine. If you owned a condo, you were watching your equity evaporate with your morning coffee.

That's shifted. Townhouses are now the worst-performing property type nationally, down 7% year over year in March. Condos are just behind at -6%. Semi-detached fell 4%. Even detached homes, which had been the last type holding its ground, slipped to -3% annually.

Every property type is now in negative territory at the national level. Whether that means the correction is broadening structurally or simply reflects concentrated weakness in BC and Ontario bleeding into the national averages is a fair debate. What's not debatable is that the weakness is no longer limited to one segment.

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What Comes Next Is Genuinely Hard to Call

RPS-Wahi economist Ryan McLaughlin said the quiet part out loud: "Macroeconomic uncertainty and rapidly evolving geopolitical strife make it difficult to confidently predict where the market is heading." That's economist-speak for "we're watching the same news you are, and it's not settling anything down."

The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% in March. Most economists expect it to stay there through much of 2026. The rate relief that a lot of buyers were banking on as their entry signal isn't materializing. If a recovery comes this year, it won't be because borrowing got cheaper. It'll be because confidence came back. And confidence is a lot harder to schedule than a rate cut.

For Quebec City and Montreal, Tal has flagged them as likely lagging indicators, suggesting they'll follow the broader pattern eventually, just on a delay. For Victoria, Hamilton, Toronto, and Vancouver, the data isn't yet showing a floor. It's showing a correction that keeps finding room to run.

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If you are weighing a buying or selling decision and the national numbers are making your head spin, the team at Coldwell Banker Horizon Realty can give you a grounded read on what is actually happening in your market. Reach out here, or explore our listings to see what the market looks like on the ground right now.