Cross Canada Check Up

The Canadian real estate market is in a slump from coast to coast.

The average price of a home is down about 10% year-over-year from $310M to $282M.

Sales are down about 12%.

However, the results are not equal across the country. Seven out of ten provinces have actually had price increases year-over-year, Saskactewan, Manitoba, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Prices are only down in B.C., Alberta and Ontario.

With those markets where sales and prices are down the most, statistics are not uniform across the province. In Ontario prices are up in Ottawa despite being down in Toronto and Hamilton. In Alberta, prices are only off slightly in Edmonton but are down sharply in Calgary.

However, the BC market is a story unto itself. Sales are off 70%, by far the greatest decline in the country, and prices are down 12% across the board, in all markets.

Despite Canada having such a small population and not having the dominant one city profile that say England, with London, or France, with Paris, exhibits, Canada is experiencing another one of those sharp regional housing price fluctuations it has faced in the past. For instance, someone who sold the average house in Vancouver last December for $577M, and purchased in Ottawa for $271M, would today be ahead by $100M in just 12 months. But someone who sold in Winnipeg for $179M and bought in Victoria would have fallen behind by $80M. Those are huge regional swings, especially because they are in after-tax dollars.

Housing is always a local issue, national numbers are really only soft indicators and can't be used to predict much. Looking at the national numbers however, does led to some questions of price stability in Alberta and B.C. given the drop in oil prices and that B.C. still has lots of room for price to fall further.