OTTAWA Resale housing actively remained stable across the country last month, with prices above year-ago levels in most markets but off recent peaks in Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Wednesday.

Overall, CREA said sales were down just 0.01 per cent in July compared with June, although non-seasonally adjusted sales were up 3.3 per cent last month compared with July 2011.

The number of newly listed homes under CREA’s Multiple Listing Service fell 3.3 per cent from June to July, while the national average home price was two per cent lower than in July 2011.

“Stable sales combined with fewer new listings firmed the national housing market, keeping it in balanced market territory,” CREA said in its monthly report.

It added that the number of local housing markets was roughly evenly split between those that saw month-over-month gains and those that posted monthly declines.

Meanwhile, the association said that nationally, resale inventories, or the time it would take to sell current inventories at the current sales rate was 6.1 months at the end of July, unchanged from the June reading.

The months of inventory measure has been hovering around six months since the end of 2010.

Average sale prices in July were up from levels of a year ago in about seven of every 10 local markets, but declining sales activity in Greater Vancouver continued to impact the national average price.

The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes sold in July 2012 was $353,147, down two per cent from the same month last year.

Excluding Greater Vancouver from the calculation, the national average price was up 1.1 per cent year over year.

The Canadian Press