Canadian National House Prices Down Year on Year

CREA Stats

Average sale prices in July were up from levels one year ago in about seven of every 10 local markets, but declining sales activity in Greater Vancouver continues to impact the national average price. The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes sold in July 2012 was $353,147, down two per cent from the same month last year. Excluding Greater Vancouver from the national average price calculation yields a year-over-year increase of 1.1 per cent.

Nationally, listings are down and sales are up. The market is bifurcating with Vancouver and Lower Mainland and Montreal (and PE) on one side and everyone else on the other.

I added the 2011 inflation rate to show the real gains.

There's been a lot of squawking in the newspaper comments about use of averages (now that averages are falling so fast, not anytime before then). The national HPI and the average are pretty related as you can see in this graph. The underlying data are skewed so of course the average runs higher, until a decline is being signaled, and then it undershoots, implying that high end sales suffer first and hardest.