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The Canadian housing market is beginning to look like a large jumbled puzzle. A week after a report showed the price of an average house had soared to a record high, an alternate report suggested Wednesday prices have in fact declined for five consecutive months.
Both sources are respectable, and their data accurate. But different methodology has led to a discrepancy between the figures. So where does the Canadian housing market stand?
Economists and those in the real estate industry believe conditions fall somewhere in the middle.
The price of a Canadian home was down 6.7% in April from a year earlier, the relatively new Teranet–National Bank House Price Index showed Wednesday. It was the fifth consecutive month of yearly decrease and caused the index to be down 8.9% from its peak in August. Home prices in Vancouver were down 10.9% from April last year, while prices dropped 9.8% in Calgary and 7.6% in Toronto. On a positive note, prices were up 2.4% in Montreal, 0.6% in Ottawa and 0.2% in Halifax.
But the data are in strong contrast to Multiple Listing Service figures released by the Canadian Real Estate Association on Monday last week.
The MLS figures showed the average national home price for May was up a robust 16.4% from January, setting a record high of $319,757.
Other indicators have thrown a few spanners in the works. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday Canadian house prices fell 11% in the first quarter, while Statistics Canada`s index on new home prices, released at the beginning of the month, showed prices in April had fallen 3.2% since hitting a record high in September 2008.
With the economy in recession and unemployment increasing, Millan Mulraine, an economics strategist at TD Securities, said it was hard to justify a rise in house prices, as suggested by the CREA survey. But he was not convinced prices had fallen as sharply as the Teranet-National Bank survey had found.
Read the full article here.
Both sources are respectable, and their data accurate. But different methodology has led to a discrepancy between the figures. So where does the Canadian housing market stand?
Economists and those in the real estate industry believe conditions fall somewhere in the middle.
The price of a Canadian home was down 6.7% in April from a year earlier, the relatively new Teranet–National Bank House Price Index showed Wednesday. It was the fifth consecutive month of yearly decrease and caused the index to be down 8.9% from its peak in August. Home prices in Vancouver were down 10.9% from April last year, while prices dropped 9.8% in Calgary and 7.6% in Toronto. On a positive note, prices were up 2.4% in Montreal, 0.6% in Ottawa and 0.2% in Halifax.
But the data are in strong contrast to Multiple Listing Service figures released by the Canadian Real Estate Association on Monday last week.
The MLS figures showed the average national home price for May was up a robust 16.4% from January, setting a record high of $319,757.
Other indicators have thrown a few spanners in the works. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday Canadian house prices fell 11% in the first quarter, while Statistics Canada`s index on new home prices, released at the beginning of the month, showed prices in April had fallen 3.2% since hitting a record high in September 2008.
With the economy in recession and unemployment increasing, Millan Mulraine, an economics strategist at TD Securities, said it was hard to justify a rise in house prices, as suggested by the CREA survey. But he was not convinced prices had fallen as sharply as the Teranet-National Bank survey had found.
Read the full article here.