Canada’s Housing Prices Continue Through the Roof

Canada’s housing prices continue to rise. See the chart dealing with the average house prices across Canada. Both Vancouver and Toronto have astronomical housing prices. The average resale price in Greater Vancouver was $878,242 in January, 2017 down 18.9 per cent from a year earlier, when it stood at $1.038 million. Vancouver’s home prices still outpace Toronto’s but not by much.

Sales in Vancouver are down 39.7 per cent from a year ago. Vancouver’s decline is led by a slump in high-end home sales, helped by a B.C. government introduction of a foreign buyer tax, immediately impacting the price of home sales. Many of these foreign investors then took aim at Toronto and elsewhere across Canada. Toronto’s average selling price is now $770,745. That is $140,552 more than a year ago, up by 23% from a year ago. And Canada’s national average reached a new high of $612,997, up 5.3 per cent from a year ago. This of course leads to speculation of a housing bubble, leading to a study offering new insights into the cause of these housing prices. See the Ryerson Study: http://www.ryerson.ca/citybuilding/news/news_internal/News_Release_In_High_Demand/

In addition, the chief planner for the City of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, weighs in on the boom versus bubble controversy:
http://www.bnn.ca/real-estate/video/boom-vs-bubble-why-toronto-s-city-planner-is-optimistic-about-home-prices~920789