Todd Korol / Reuters A newly built house for sale Calgary, April 7, 2015. Like most of Canada's largest cities, Calgary saw a decline in home prices in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Canada's housing markets ended 2018 with a thud, with sales falling for the fourth straight month in December, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said Tuesday. The nationwide average house price fell to $472,000, down 4.9 per cent from a year earlier. This doesn't mean prices are falling nationwide; rather, the slowdown in Toronto and Vancouver means fewer of the expensive homes there figure into the calculations, dragging down the average. Nationwide home sales in December were 19 per cent lower than a year earlier. However, that compares to December 2017, when there was a mini-rush of homebuyers scrambling to buy homes before new mortgage rules kicked in. Even so, sales were still 12 per cent below their average for the month. Watch: Canada's most expensive condo just got a serious price cut. Story continues below.

Sales fell in about 60 per cent of all local markets, led by Greater Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Ottawa, London/St. Thomas and Halifax-Dartmouth, CREA reported. "What a difference a year makes," CREA President Barb Sukkau said in a statement. The new mortgage stress test "has weighed on sales to varying degrees in all Canadian housing markets and it will continue to do so this year," she added. Among major cities, very few are still seeing price growth. The Teranet house price index, a separate measure of housing prices from CREA's data, shows that prices fell in nine of 11 major Canadian cities in the fourth quarter of 2018. Only Montreal and Ottawa-Gatineau are still seeing rising prices.

National Bank Financial House prices fell in most major Canadian cities in the fourth quarter of 2018.