Calgary home prices drop steepest in Canada

Calgary led the country in February with the steepest decline in house prices, according to a national report released Wednesday.

The Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index said Calgary house prices fell by 8.1 per cent year-over-year followed by Vancouver at 6.4 per cent and Toronto at five per cent.

The national composite price drop was 4.1 per cent.

Calgary also recorded the biggest drop from peak prices. In the city, house prices have fallen by 12 per cent from the August 2007 peak, followed by a 10.2 per cent decline in Vancouver from its June 2008 peak and a nine per cent drop in Toronto from its peak of August 2008.

Lessons from Toronto’s Real Estate Crash

The overall mood about the current state of Toronto’s real estate market typically depends on the two most commonly reported statistics in the press, average price and sales volume. Average price is a popular measure but can be easily skewed by changes in the housing stock being sold.

I often have clients ask me for a list of the best and worst performing neighbourhoods in the city, based solely on changes in average price. The problem with this approach is that average prices can be very easily skewed. For example, if a new condo with average priced units is completed in a neighbourhood well known for expensive detached homes, the average price for that neighbourhood will fall not because house values have dropped but because the condominium units are having a negative effect on average prices.

The other commonly reported figure in the press is the change in sales volume calculated by comparing the current month’s sales to sales in the same month in the previous year.

Canada questions real estate competition

In March 2007 the Canadian Competition Bureau, the country's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division, met with limited-service real estate brokers in the U.S.

The meetings were part of a bureau examination (see Inman News) that eyed passed and proposed multiple listing service-related restrictions on limited-service and flat-fee brokers and whether those restrictions limited competition within the real estate industry.

Toronto housing market shows signs of recovery

There are signs that life is returning to Toronto's depressed real estate market.

Numbers released Friday show only slightly fewer homes were sold in Toronto during the first two weeks of April 2009 compared with April 2008.

There were just under 1,500 homes sold in the first half of the month — or about one per cent fewer than the same two weeks last year.

"In lock-step with the favourable March results, resale housing market conditions in the first half of April were markedly improved compared to the winter time," said Toronto Real Estate Board president Maureen O’Neill in a prepared statement.