The U.S. housing market has slowed, after ** consecutive years of rising home prices. In 2021, house prices surged by an unprecedented ** percent, marking the highest increase on record. However, the market has since cooled, with the Freddie Mac House Price Index showing more modest growth between 2022 and 2024. In 2024, home prices increased by *** percent. That was lower than the long-term average of *** percent since 1990. Impact of mortgage rates on homebuying The recent cooling in the housing market can be partly attributed to rising mortgage rates. After reaching a record low of **** percent in 2021, the average annual rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage more than doubled in 2023. This significant increase has made homeownership less affordable for many potential buyers, contributing to a substantial decline in home sales. Despite these challenges, forecasts suggest a potential recovery in the coming years. How much does it cost to buy a house in the U.S.? In 2023, the median sales price of an existing single-family home reached a record high of over ******* U.S. dollars. Newly built homes were even pricier, despite a slight decline in the median sales price in 2023. Naturally, home prices continue to vary significantly across the country, with West Virginia being the most affordable state for homebuyers.

In November 2024, a single-family house in Oak Bay cost *** million Canadian dollars. Oak Bay was the most expensive suburb in Victoria, British Columbia, followed by Highlands and North Saanich. Victoria: an overview Victoria is the capital city of the province of British Columbia. The city is located south of Vancouver, and across the U.S. border from Seattle. In 2020, the average home price in Victoria was ******* Canadian dollars, which placed the city as the sixth most expensive Canadian city for residential real estate. Home affordability in Canada Housing affordability is, undoubtedly, one of the biggest barriers to homeownership in Canada. In 2023, the ratio of homeownership costs to income was **** percent. Nevertheless, more expensive locations in the country had a higher ratio, with Vancouver exceeding 100 percent, suggesting that on average, mortgage payments exceeded the monthly income. Amid lower affordability and worsening homebuyer sentiment, house prices in some of Canada's markets are forecast to decline slightly in 2024.

In the first quarter of 2025, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Honolulu were some of the U.S. cities with the highest housing construction costs. Meanwhile, Phoenix had one of the lowest construction costs for high-end multifamily homes at *** U.S. dollars per square foot and Las Vegas for single-family homes between *** and *** U.S. dollars per square foot. Construction cost disparities As seen here, the construction cost for a high-end multi-family home in San Francisco in the first quarter of 2024 was over ***** more expensive than in Phoenix. Meanwhile, there were also great differences in the cost of building a single-family house in New York and in Portland or Seattle. Some factors that may cause these disparities are the construction materials, installation, and composite costs, differing land values, wages, etc. For example, although the price of construction materials in the U.S. was rising at a slower level than in 2022 and 2023, several materials that are essential in most construction projects had growth rates of over **** percent in 2024. Growing industry revenue Despite the economic uncertainty and other challenges, the size of the private construction market in the U.S. rose during the past years. It is important to consider that supply and demand for housing influences the revenue of this segment of the construction market. On the supply side, single-family home construction fell in 2023, but it is expected to rise in 2024 and 2025. On the demand side, some of the U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest sale prices of single-family homes were located in California, with San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at the top of the ranking.