Financial Post
Province
Prices for new homes in Canada rose 0.3 per cent in March, following a 0.1-per-cent increase in February and extending gains that began in July 2009, Statistics Canada reported.
StatsCan said its new-house price index was also up 1.6 per cent in March from a year earlier, compared with an annual increase of 0.9 per cent in February, growth “mostly due to higher prices in Vancouver,” it said.
The new housing price index measures changes over time in the selling prices of new houses.
Higher material costs boosted the index in Montreal and the Ontario cities of Kitchener and London, where prices saw the biggest month-to-month jump.
In Charlottetown and Hamilton, which saw the biggest decreases between March and February, “some builders negotiated lower selling prices,” StatsCan said.
Of the 21 metropolitan regions included in the index, the agency reported that Victoria, Edmonton and Charlottetown were the only ones to report year-over-year declines.
The introduction of a harmonized sales tax on July 1 in Ontario and B.C. could bring the index down in those provinces during the tax-implementation period.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said home construction rose 1.3 per cent in April as Canada’s real-estate market continued to show signs of recovery.
Housing starts were up by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 201,700 units last month, up from a revised 199,200 units in March.
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