Canada-based users searching for U.S. homes on Redfin.com fell 15.3% year over year in June, according to a Redfin report released July 28, extending a decline that has now stretched to roughly 37% over the past two years.
The June drop followed a 10.1% year-over-year decline in May, indicating the pullback in Canadian interest accelerated rather than eased heading into summer. Redfin’s two-year comparison shows the retreat has been building steadily: June 2025 searches were already down 25.7% from June 2024, and this June’s searches are down a further 15.3% from that already-reduced base.
The decline was broad, hitting 45 of the 50 most populous U.S. metros Redfin tracks. San Antonio saw the steepest falloff, with Canada-based searches down 51.8% year over year, followed by Austin (down 48.6%), Nassau County, N.Y. (down 33.4%), Houston (down 32.5%) and Cleveland (down 29.3%). A handful of metros bucked the trend: Kansas City posted the largest gain in Canadian search interest, up 17.6% year over year, followed by New Brunswick, N.J. (up 11.6%), Nashville (up 9.4%), Sacramento (up 9.3%) and St. Louis (up 9.3%).
“Canada’s economy is starting to recover after a weak start to the year, but uncertainty around trade, jobs, the domestic housing market and inflation is still prompting many Canadians to think twice about making a major purchase,” said Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, in the report.
Redfin’s figures track unique Canada-based users viewing U.S. home listings on its site during each month; the company notes that searches are a demand indicator and do not necessarily translate into completed home purchases.
Canada has for years ranked among the largest sources of foreign homebuyers in the U.S., drawn historically by geographic proximity and cultural familiarity. Several of the metros posting the steepest search declines, including San Antonio and Austin, are Sun Belt destinations that have drawn Canadian snowbirds and second-home buyers in past years, while metros still gaining Canadian search interest, such as Kansas City, Nashville and St. Louis, are lower-cost Midwestern and Southern markets.
The pullback in cross-border house-hunting comes as Redfin has separately tracked a shift in who is buying vacation and second homes domestically. Redfin reported this week that U.S. vacation-home mortgage originations rose in 2025 for the first time in four years, though that increase was concentrated among high-income domestic buyers rather than foreign purchasers. The Canadian search data suggests that whatever is drawing more affluent U.S. buyers back into second-home markets has not yet extended to reviving interest from Canada, historically one of the largest sources of foreign buyers in the U.S. housing market.
What it means: The search-volume percentages and metro rankings are Redfin’s own reported data, based on its site traffic, and are a real-time indicator of buyer interest rather than a count of actual transactions. Chen Zhao’s explanation citing trade and economic uncertainty is Redfin’s attributed interpretation, not an independently verified causal finding; RealtyWire notes that a strengthening or weakening Canadian dollar, mortgage rates, and border-crossing or tariff policy could each independently affect search behavior in ways this report does not isolate. What to watch: whether searches stabilize if Canada’s broader economic recovery, which Zhao described as already underway, continues through the second half of 2026. RealtyWire’s analysis: the concentration of declines in Sun Belt vacation-home markets, versus gains in lower-cost non-vacation metros, is at least consistent with the pullback being concentrated in discretionary second-home purchases rather than relocation-driven ones, though Redfin’s report does not break out buyer intent and this reading should be treated as an inference, not a confirmed finding.
