Canadian Housing Obser ver 2012
Sellers’ market thresholds vary across urban centres, reflecting underlying differences in local demographic and economic conditions. As a result, local market thresholds do not necessarily coincide with national average thresholds. In 2011, 11 of the 31 major urban centres10 were in sellers’ market conditions, on average over the course of the year (see Figure 3-7). By population in the 2011 Census, sellers’ market conditions existed in Toronto, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Québec, Oshawa, Saguenay, Barrie, Guelph, Thunder Bay, Brantford and Moncton. Market conditions across urban centres were broadly similar in 2010, when 10 urban centres were in sellers’ market conditions. The two largest Canadian urban centres of Montréal and Toronto moved across local thresholds in opposite directions between 2010 and 2011, with Montréal crossing the threshold from a sellers’ market in 2010 to a balanced market in 2011, while Toronto emerged as a sellers’ market in 2011.
MLS® average existing home prices and the New Housing Price Index increased in most centres in 2011 Resale home prices were up in most major urban centres, with particularly strong gains in Vancouver, where prices increased 15.4% in 2011 to $779,730 (see Figures 3-8 and 3-9). However, price growth in Vancouver weakened
10
3-8
Figure 3-7 Fig 3-7
MLS sales-to-new-listings ratio (SNLR), Canada and selected urban centres, 2001-2011 range1 and 2011 value ®
SNLR (per cent) 90
2001-2011 Range
2011 Value
80 70 60 50 40 30 Canada Victoria Vancouver Edmonton Calgary Saskatoon Regina Winnipeg Thunder Bay Sudbury Barrie Windsor London Guelph Brantford Kitchener St. Catharines-Niagara Hamilton Toronto Oshawa Peterborough Kingston Ottawa Montréal Trois-Rivières Sherbrooke Québec Saguenay Saint John Moncton Halifax St. John’s
home prices increased 5.9% in 2010 (to $339,200) and 7.1% in 2011 (to $363,116). Balanced market conditions continued to prevail in the first half of 2012, with the ratio of sales-to-new-listings registering a value of 53.4% in the second quarter, very close to its 2011 level of 53.2%, as sales growth slightly outpaced growth in new listings in the first half of the year. Average existing home prices increased 0.8% on a raw, unadjusted basis between the first quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012 before registering a 0.1% year-over-year decline in the second quarter of 2012. The seasonally adjusted average level of existing home prices was $364,328 in the second quarter of 2012.
1
Minimums and maximums for Montréal are from the 2004-2011 period; for all other centres in Quebec, the range is from the 2002-2011 period.
Sources: Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA); Quebec Federation of Real Estate Boards. MLS® is a registered trademark for CREA.
markedly in the first quarter and second quarter of 2012, registering year-over-year declines of 1.0% and 11.5% when compared to the first and second quarter of 2011, respectively (on a non-seasonally adjusted basis). The seasonally adjusted level of average existing home prices in the second quarter of 2012 was $713,649 in Vancouver. Toronto also registered strong growth (7.9%) in 2011, reaching an average level of $466,352. Consistent with the emergence of local sellers’ market conditions in Toronto, price growth remained strong in the first and second quarters of 2012, at 10.1% and 7.2%, respectively (on a year-over-year, seasonally unadjusted basis),
Data on existing home sales, new listings and price growth are published by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and the Quebec Federation of Real Estate Boards (QFREB). While the geographic units of analysis of these two agencies generally overlap with Statistics Canada’s definition of CMAs, they are not identical. This chapter refers to the geographic regions covered by the Real Estate Boards as urban centres, in order to avoid suggesting that there is a perfect correspondence with the CMAs defined in the 2006 Census. However, for the sake of comparison with the housing starts and new home inventory data collected by CMHC, which is based on Census definitions, the analysis of existing home markets focuses on those urban centres most closely overlapping CMAs.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation