Wednesday, May 27, 2009

House Price Index Indicates Prices are Still Falling

Here is what the press release says:

More deflation, Montreal holding up best

Canadian home prices in March were down 5.8% from a year earlier, according to the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index™. It was the fourth consecutive 12-month decline. March was also the seventh straight month in which the composite index was down from the month before - the longest run of monthly declines since the beginning of index coverage in February 2000. The composite is now down 8.5% from its peak of last August.

Teranet – National Bank National Composite House Price Index™

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Of the six constituent city indices, four were down from a year earlier: Vancouver (−9.6%), Calgary (−8.4%), Toronto (−6.7%) and Halifax (−0.8%). While prices were still up from a year earlier in Montreal (3.2%) and Ottawa (2.8%), the 12-month increase in those two cities has decelerated markedly in recent months. In Calgary, prices have been correcting for well over a year now - since August 2007 - and are now down 12.7% from the peak of that month. Calgary has shown monthly declines in 16 of the 19 months posted since then, including every month from last July through March.

Vancouver prices have also shown nine consecutive monthly declines, and are down 11.7% from peak. Toronto prices have declined seven months in a row and are down 10.8% from peak. Ottawa prices have declined five months in a row and are down 4.3% from peak. A run of three monthly declines in Halifax was interrupted in March, but prices there are 3.0% below their November peak. Montreal prices have held up better. In March they were flat from the month before, down 1.6% from the peak of last September after monthly declines in four of the six intervening months.

Teranet – National Bank House Price Index™

The historical data of the Teranet – National Bank House Price Index™ is available at www.housepriceindex.ca.

Metropolitan areaIndex level
Mar-2009
% change m/m% change y/yFrom peakPeak Date
Calgary152.97-0.8 %-8.4 %-12.7%Aug-2007
Halifax118.171.0 %-0.8 %-3.0%Nov-2008
Montreal120.600.0 %2.9 %-1.6%Sep-2008
Ottawa113.14-0.5 %1.0 %-4.3%Oct-2008
Toronto104.68-1.9 %-6.9 %-10.8%Aug-2008
Vancouver133.02-1.7 %-9.6 %-11.7%Jun-2008
National Composite119.62-1.3 %-5.8 %-8.5%Aug-2008

The Teranet–National Bank House Price Index™ is estimated by tracking observed or registered home prices over time using data collected from public land registries. All dwellings that have been sold at least twice are considered in the calculation of the index. This is known as the repeat sales method; a complete description of the method is given at www.housepriceindex.ca

3 comments:

macho slob said...

More deflation for price of assets and wages, but the perfect storm to kill the spring RE bounce will be higher mortgage rates. Regardless of what the FED and the BOC would like us to believe, bond and treasury rates in the private sector are going up at a scary pace....enough to spook Wall Street today.

JimTan said...

Interesting!

Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver are all down about the same from the peak (11-12%). I wonder what it means since affordability and supply are so different between the cities.

AndrewJ said...

Off topic: I noticed that your NV Condos data link is old and not working. The new site is: http://www.nvcondos.ca/
and Gavin (Paul's friend) continues to post the daily inventory and other stats.