It’s still early days for the October sales data, but after a fairly slow September for sales across GVR market regions, October seems to be off to a strong start.

Consider this plot of sales for the first eight days of each October going back to 2010:

If you’ve been around long enough to remember what the market was like back around 2015, or the heydays of the pandemic circa 2020, this October might have an eerily similar feeling to it (so far).

Back it up

For comparative purposes, we can actually pull in even more data going back to the early 1990s, to rank the pace of sales through the first eight days of this October, relative to all the previous history we have on record.

Here’s a plot of that:

Looking at the data this way, October 2024 is the eighth strongest for sales through the first eight days of the month going all the way back to 1994.

Again, it’s important to highlight that this is a very short snapshot of the data to date this month, and the pace of sales could certainly slow as we approach the end of the month.

And don’t forget, there’s another policy rate announcement by the Bank of Canada coming up October 23, with some speculating it could be a “super sized” 50bps cut, which could bring even more buyers off the sidelines.

Whether this early strength is a treat that can be sustained to the end of the month, or a trick fooling us¹ into thinking rate cuts are finally starting to impact the market, will be the question to watch this month.

I suppose there’s the impact of that provincial election too.

But this is more entertaining in my books.

;-)

Footnotes

Fooling me, anyway.↩︎