Price growth is largely due to the influence of the most active markets
Recently, the trends in Canadian residential prices region by region have increasingly deviated from each other, with stabilization in the Lower Mainland and the Prairies, decline in Edmonton and Regina, or growth in Vancouver and Fraser Valley.
On the whole, latest figures from the Canadian Real Estate Association indicated that national home sales remained steady from September to October 2019.
However, while the national average home sales price last month saw only a modest 5.8% annual increase (up to around $525,000), the outsized influence of two major markets kept it relatively high.
“The national average price is heavily skewed by sales in the GVA and GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive housing markets,” CREA stated. “Excluding these two markets from calculations cuts almost $125,000 from the national average price, trimming it to around $400,000 and reducing the year-over-year gain to 4.7%.”
The Greater Golden Horseshoe, in particular, has been a focus of accelerated growth over the past few years.
“In markets further east, price growth has been trending higher for the last three or four years,” CREA added. “Comparing home prices to year-ago levels yields considerable variations across the country, with mostly declines in western Canada and mostly price gains in eastern Canada.”
More importantly, some markets have seen their price increases continue unabated.
“In Ontario, price growth has re-accelerated well ahead of overall consumer price inflation across most of the GGH. Meanwhile, price growth in recent years has continued uninterrupted in Ottawa, Montreal and Moncton.”
