Vancouver still most expensive
Ashley Ford
Province
Victoria, not Vancouver, had the dubious distinction of having the fastest-growing housing prices in Canada over the last quarter, says Royal LePage in its latest house-price survey.
However, Vancouver continues to hold the crown for the most expensive housing in the country by a long margin. The report said the average price of a two-storey home in Canada rose seven per cent, year-over-year, to $327,269 in the fourth quarter.
Increases ranged from 21.2 per cent in Victoria to $325,000, 15.5 per cent in Calgary to $245,089, 13.2 per cent in Winnipeg to $200,857, 11.6 per cent in Vancouver to $630,750, 10.2 per cent in Halifax to $180,500, four per cent in Toronto to $443,737 and 2.6 per cent in Montreal to $301,181.
Royal predicts housing prices will continue to creep up this year, rising an average six per cent. But it also says home sales will start to dip this year, bringing some hoped- for balance back in the market, said Phil Soper, CEO of Royal LePage Real Estate Services.
“We’ve been climbing this mountain. We reached the top in 2005 and now we’re on a very high plateau,” said Soper.
Soper says buying activity peaked last year, pushing the market into the next stage of the housing cycle this year, as the number of homes sold is expected to fall by three per cent.
“We’ve lived through a seller’s market now for several years, in which if you owned a home and didn’t have to move into another one, it was a great time, because you had many more people looking at your property,” he added.
“We’re coming to a period now where that demand has been satisfied, and where buyers and sellers are entering into negotiations on a more equal footing.”
But, he agrees, the surging economies in Western Canada could see house prices climb above the national average this year in B.C. and Alberta particularly.
Earlier this week, Statistics Canada released data showing the prices of new homes rose by about five per cent in 2005 for the third year in a row.
“The upward pressure on home prices continues,” says BMO Nesbitt Burns chief economist Sherry Cooper.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
