By Katie Davis C anada’s housing market continues to set new records, with the average sale price up to $508,097 in April, the busiest month for home sales in Canadian history. The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) says the average house price increased by more than 13% year over year ending in April. CREA has said for several months in a row that the average price is skewed higher, because of aggressive and larger real estate markets in and around Toronto and Vancouver. If we were to take these two areas out, the Canadian National Average drops to $369,222 and the year-over-year gain is reduced to 8.7%.
According to CREA these average figures can be somewhat misleading, so to balance this it uses the Aggregate Composite MLS House Price Index, and says that it is a better and fairer representation of the real market trends because it blends together all housing types.
Even using the the Aggregate Composite MLS House Price Index, the CREA index rose 10.3% in April, its biggest gain in almost six years stretch- ing back to May 2010.
These are the hot market areas in and around Toronto and Vancouver:
These are a look at other housing markets across Canada.
The Greater Vancouver up by 25.3%
Calgary up 1.1%
The nearby Fraser Valley up by 25.6%
Saskatoon up 0.6%
Prices in the GTA were up by 12.6%
Winnipeg down 0.5%
Victoria was up 12.0%
Ottawa up 0.1%
Vancouver Island prices were up by 8.2%
Saint John up 4.6%
Halifax up 2.3%
However, prices declined by 3.5% and 2.4% in Calgary and Saskatoon, respectively, which are smaller declines than those that were posted in these markets for March.
St John’s down 9.0%
Sales volumes were also showing increases with 70% of all markets showing gains. And Toronto and Vancouver are the exception to the rule as the national sales figure rose to its highest level ever in April.
CREA has said houses are selling so fast on a national basis that sell rate has been pushed to its lowest level in more than six years, at 4.7 months (This number represents how many months at the current sales rate it would take to sell your house).
Bank of Montreal economist Robert Kavcic states that the large national figure masks wide regional variances across the country.
“Of the 26 major regions covered, six saw double-digit average price gains in April, 10 saw outright declines, while the median city was running at 1.4%,” Kavcic said.
Kavcic also stated that, “It’s business as usual in Canada’s housing market, with extreme strength in Toronto and Vancouver, corrections playing out in the oil-exposed markets, while most others fall somewhere in between. With supply in the two hot markets extremely tight, and policymak- ers barely testing the water, prices are likely to push even higher through the rest of this year.”
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JUNE 2016 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
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