BMO Economics says demand for housing in Canada is “piping hot”.

The bank released a report Tuesday (February 16) describing sales across the country as one marked by “hot hot heat”.

As Robert Kavcic, a senior economist and director of economics with BMO, put it: “The Canadian housing market is fully boiling.”

According to Kavcic, new listings fell 13.3 percent in January across the country.

This “lifted the national sales-to-new listings ratio to an unheard of 91%”.

“Think of that another way: Across Canada, almost all new listings are getting absorbed within a month,” Kavcic wrote.

“And the standing inventory of homes available for sale would be all gone in less than two months,” the BMO economist continued.

According to Kavcic, this “metric typically runs around 60% nationally”.

“Against that backdrop, it doesn’t take much imagination to see prices rising,” the economist wrote.

Kavcic noted that prices are in fact currently on the rise “at an accelerating rate, and across almost all of the country”.

In January, the national home price index 13.5 percent year over year, which was the “fastest clip since mid-2017 (when policymakers were actively trying to calm markets in Toronto and Vancouver)”.

“Unless there’s a sudden release of listings (unlikely, especially for detached homes, with mobility down), or a sudden break in demand, we’ll repeat again that prices are going higher still,” Kavcic wrote.