SmartHomeOwners

OTTAWA: The Canadian Real Estate Association says sales of existing homes rose month-to-month in August for the first time since March.

There were about 32,800 transactions in August, up 4.1 per cent from July on a seasonally adjusted basis.

But the number of units sold was down 22 per cent from 42,350 units in August 2009.

CREA says high sales activity late in 2009 and early this year have borrowed from sales that would normally have been made during the summer.

The average price of homes sold through the Multiple Listing Service last month was $324,928, little changed from $324,843 in August 2009.

The number of new listings was also more than double than the number of sales.

As a result, it would take nearly seven months for all the listings to be sold at the current pace _ a slight improvement from July but still relatively high.