Market doing fast fade
Garry Marr
Province
House prices in Vancouver fell by almost one per cent in the past year
TORONTO — The Canadian housing market got another dose of bad news with new statistics showing home prices are falling fast, led by a pullback in Alberta.
The Canada Real Estate Association says the average price of a home sold in Canada‘s top 25 markets last month was $327,020, a 3.6-per-cent decline from a year ago.
It’s the second year-over-year drop after the June numbers fell 0.4 per cent.
The news comes after Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Tuesday that new-home construction was down 13.6 per cent in July from a month earlier, reaching its lowest level in almost a year.
Statistics Canada also said new-home prices grew by only 3.5 per cent in June from a year earlier.
It was the slowest rate of the growth since March 2002.
The malaise in housing is now clearly being felt across most of the country, but nowhere more keenly than Calgary and Edmonton.
In Calgary, the average MLS property sale in July dipped to $413,371, a 10.1-per-cent decline from a year earlier. Overall sales in Alberta‘s largest city also fell 13.1 per cent from a year ago.
In Edmonton, the average price dropped eight per cent from a year ago to $344,636. Sales were up 12.4 per cent.
About a year ago, it was not uncommon to see price increases of 50 per cent in both cities, a fact that propelled Calgary‘s average sale prices past Toronto last year.
“The combination of a larger inventory of homes for sale and fewer home sales means less upward pressure on home prices in many markets,” says Calvin Lindberg, president of the association.
“The challenge for many sellers is determining the right price for today’s market conditions,” Lindberg said.
“There is no doubt the Canadian real-estate market is pulling back from record sales and price increase levels of 2007.”
There were few exceptions to the trend in the major markets, which saw July sales dip 11 per cent from a year earlier.
At the same time new listings rose 11.3 per cent.
Greater Vancouver sales continue to drop, with the number of units changing hands in July at 2,284, a 43.5-per-cent drop from a year ago.
New listings jumped 22.6 per cent in July from a year ago.
The result was Vancouver home prices actually fell 0.7 per cent in July from a year earlier, though it is still the most expensive market in the country with an average price of $575,730.
Toronto did not fare much better. Sales in the country’s largest city fell 12.4 per cent from a year ago while new listings jumped 17.8 per cent last month from July 2007.
Prices in Toronto rose a meagre 1.5 per cent to an average of $371,410.
The only market sill on fire is Regina, where the average price of a home sold in July was $247,030, a 35.7 per cent from a year ago.
But there are telling signs there, too, with sales off 37.1 per cent from a year ago and new listings up 27.9 per cent.
— Financial Post
