From The Past 5 Years – Dieppe, Moncton & Riverview

Since early 2020, headlines about the housing market have swung from “red hot” to “on the brink of collapse,” leaving many buyers, sellers, and homeowners feeling confused. The narrative changes so quickly it’s difficult to know what’s really going on. Was it a bubble? Is a crash coming? Are prices finally stabilizing? The speculation can be overwhelming.

This analysis cuts through that noise. By examining the raw market data from January 2020 through the projections for November 2025, we can move beyond speculation to uncover the fundamental drivers of the market. The five truths uncovered below are not what you’ve been told. They will reframe your entire understanding of the post-pandemic housing market, moving you from a confused spectator to an informed analyst.

1. Inventory Didn’t Just Dip, It Vanished—And It’s Still Recovering

The single most critical factor driving the market over the last five years was not interest rates or buyer demand alone—it was the catastrophic collapse of housing inventory. The number of homes available for sale didn’t just get low; it nearly disappeared, creating the foundation for the chaos that followed. This wasn’t a cyclical dip; it was a supply shock likely driven by a pandemic-era cocktail of factors: homeowners refinancing at record-low rates (the “golden handcuffs” effect), a pause in new construction, and a surge in demand from buyers seeking more space.

The data shows a stark contrast. In January 2020, just before the market upheaval began, there were 881 active listings. Two years later, by January 2022, that number had plummeted to an all-time low of just 346 active listings. This represents a more than 60% reduction in the available housing supply in only 24 months. While inventory has been slowly climbing back since that low point and is projected to reach 831 listings by June 2025 (a forecasted figure), it has taken over three years just to approach pre-2020 levels. This historic supply shock is the essential starting point for understanding every other trend.

2. Home Prices More Than Doubled

This supply vacuum created a classic seller’s market on an unprecedented scale. With demand far outstripping the available homes, the laws of economics took over, igniting a price surge that redefined the market in just two years. With far too many buyers competing for far too few homes, bidding wars became the norm, and prices were pushed to levels that would have seemed impossible just a year or two prior.

The numbers are staggering. In January 2020, the median sale price for a home was $187,500. By June 2025, that same median home price is projected to hit $405,000 (a projected figure). This is a 116% increase in just over five years. This price explosion has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of affordability, creating significant barriers for first-time buyers and dramatically altering the financial calculations for existing homeowners. Source

3. The “Average” Home Price Became Wildly Misleading

In a volatile market, looking at the “average” sale price can paint a very deceptive picture. This is a crucial distinction because the median price represents the midpoint—half of homes sold for more, and half sold for less—while the average can be heavily skewed by a small number of extremely high-priced luxury sales. At the peak of the market frenzy, this gap became a chasm.

Think of it this way: if nine people in a room make $50,000 and one person makes $1 million, the average salary is $145,000—a number that represents no one’s experience. The median salary is $50,000, which tells the true story for the typical person. The same was true for the housing market in February 2024. During that month, the median sale price was $390,500. However, the average sale price in that same month was an astronomical $508,151. What the data reveals here is a gap of over $117,000, showing that a few multi-million dollar sales were pulling the average way up and creating a distorted view of a market that was far more expensive than what most people were actually paying.

4. Fewer People Bought Homes, But They Paid More For Them

Here is one of the most counterintuitive truths from the data: the period of the most intense price growth was not driven by a record number of people buying houses. In fact, the total volume of sales went down. The market’s volatility began immediately; sales cratered to just 83 in April 2020 as the world locked down, before roaring back and peaking in 2021.

The peak year for the sheer number of sales was 2021, with standout months like April (309 sales) and March (272 sales). As prices continued to skyrocket into 2022 and 2023, the number of transactions fell consistently. For example, April 2022 saw only 218 sales, and April 2023 had just 150 sales—less than half the volume of April 2021. This pattern confirms that the market frenzy wasn’t about more buyers; it was about the buyers who remained being forced to compete much more aggressively for the few properties available.

5. The Market’s “Normal” Has Been Fundamentally Reset

The biggest question throughout the price surge has been, “When will things go back to normal?” The data suggests they won’t. While the extreme conditions have eased, the market has not crashed back to pre-2020 levels. Instead, it has established a new, much higher baseline for both prices and inventory.

Consider this: in December 2020, an inventory of 638 active listings was considered low, and the median price was 205,600. Fast forward to December 2023, when inventory was even lower at 461 listings. Instead of prices correcting, they had established a new floor, with the median price sitting at $340,075. This demonstrates a key economic principle: prices are often “sticky downward.” Once a new price floor is established in a market with persistent undersupply, it takes a far more severe shock than a modest inventory recovery to bring it down significantly. The familiar seasonal trends of busier springs and slower winters still exist, but they are now operating on a completely different and permanently more expensive scale.

Final Thoughts

The story of the last five years in housing isn’t about a simple boom or a speculative bubble. It was a market fundamentally reshaped by a severe, historic collapse in inventory. This supply shock triggered a price explosion, fueled fierce competition among fewer actual buyers, and ultimately established a new, permanently higher price floor. The common “bubble” and “crash” narratives were flawed because they ignored this foundational reality. The chaotic headlines were simply reflecting the symptoms of this one core event.

Now that the baseline has shifted so dramatically, what will it take for the market to feel ‘balanced’ again?