The average selling price of a Canadian home was $489,591 last month, a figure that has increased by more than seven per cent in the past year, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Thursday.

CREA said it has noticed a cooling in sales activity, as there were more than 5.2 per cent fewer home sales in November than in the previous month. That’s the biggest monthly drop in home sales in more than four years.

“November was the first full month in which the expanded stress-test was in effect for home buyers with less than a 20 per cent down payment,” CREA president Cliff Iverson said.

“The government’s newly tightened mortgage regulations have dampened a wide swath of housing markets, including places not targeted directly by the government’s latest regulatory measures.”

Sales were still strong in the Greater Toronto Area, but there was a pronounced slowdown in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

” The drop in demand was spread across two-thirds of regional markets with Ontario markets being the only exceptions given the booming demand and tight inventory,” TD Bank economist Diana Petramala said. ” Vancouver remained the weakest market with sales activity down 37 per cent from the year ago.”

Those two cities continue to dominate any discussion of the national housing market, as high prices in both still skew the national average higher. If both cities are stripped out of the calculation, the national average house price drops to $361,260 last month.