National homes sales edged down in February from the previous month, and the benchmark home price fell 4.8 per cent compared to the same time last year, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said on Tuesday.

CREA chief economist Shaun Cathcart said February’s data showed a “continuation of the quieter levels of activity” seen in January, but he said the association expects “pent-up” demand to boil over during the spring season.

New listings were down 3.9 per cent in February compared to January, and the sales-to-new-listings ratio also narrowed. CREA said price declines in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta offset gains made in other provinces.

The MLS Home Price Index showed that the national benchmark home price was $661,100 last month, close to the prices seen in the spring of 2021.

“What we’ve seen so far is that home resales are still fairly sluggish,” said Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at RBC, in an interview with CBC News.

Those trends are primarily impacting Ontario and B.C., he said, “but we’re starting to see some moderation in other parts of Canada as well,” including parts of Alberta and Quebec, where smaller and mid-sized housing markets were hot in the second half of last year.

St. John’s, Regina and Quebec City saw considerable price increases, for example — with Quebec City skyrocketing 17 per cent — while housing activity stalled in larger cities amid heightened economic anxiety.

Hogue said those concerns are now spreading to regions that benefitted from last year’s interest rate cuts, and that the war in Iran might contribute to subdued economic sentiment. Meanwhile, a buildup in inventory is putting pressure on prices and contributing to the sluggish market.

“Maybe [in the] latter stages of 2026, we’re going to see the market strengthening a little bit, but that’s based on some of the uncertainty lifting,” Hogue said. “The odds are that it’s going to be a fairly kind of restrained season, but we’ll see.”

The Bank of Canada will make its next interest rate policy decision on Wednesday.

While Hogue said that his team at RBC expects the central bank to hold rates, other analysts have started to price in a rate cut for sometime this year after last week’s surprisingly weak jobs report.