Recent Canadian Home Prices
Most of us wonder from time to time what our home in Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County or the Edmonton area is worth in today’s real estate market, and we may also wonder what prices are like elsewhere in Canada.
From the Canadian Real Estate Association:
“Each month, The Canadian Real Estate Association compiles the statistics of existing homes and properties sold through the Multiple Listing Service®. This provides an overview of the existing housing market in Canada, and tracks market trends for prices and properties sold.”
Here are CREA’s latest home price comparisons:
| October 2010 | October 2009 | |
| British Columbia | $521,871 | $493,328 |
| Alberta | $344,569 | $351,768 |
| Saskatchewan | $234,147 | $230,958 |
| Manitoba | $224,439 | $204,606 |
| Ontario | $347,788 | $337,410 |
| Quebec | $257,456 | $239,240 |
| New Brunswick | $152,087 | $151,218 |
| Nova Scotia | $194,578 | $189,570 |
| Prince Edward Island | $150,091 | $155,028 |
| Newfoundland/Labrador | $231,039 | $196,847 |
| Yukon | $304,800 | $296,738 |
| Northwest Territories | $352,869 | $363,435 |
| National Average | $343,747 | $341,232 |
Can we draw any conclusions from this data?
We probably knew already that the highest home prices are to be found in BC, but we can see a few other things:
- In October 2010, only 4 provinces/territories had prices above the national average: BC, NWT, Ontario and Alberta, in that order.
- The average selling price in October 2010 for a home in BC was roughly 3 ½ times that of a home in the area having the lowest average price in Canada, PEI.
- Average prices were higher in October 2010 than the previous year in every area of Canada except Alberta, PEI and NWT.
The interactive map on this page of the CREA website also allows us to compare average selling prices for a few of the major cities in Canada. For Edmonton and Calgary this is what we find:
| October 2010 | October 2009 | ||
| Edmonton | $317,096 | $351,768 | -$34,672 |
| Calgary | $399,679 | $393,574 | +$ 6,105 |
Now why, we might ask, did Edmonton prices drop close to 10% during the one-year period between October 2009 and October 2010 while Calgary’s increased more than 1.5%? The data provided by the Canadian Real Estate Association provide only the bare facts. Chances are, we’d discover many complex reasons for this disparity: things like types of property sold (single family homes vs. multi-family dwellings, condos, etc.), the number of homes on the market, along with features of the properties, such as age, size, condition, location, amenities, and many more. Average home selling prices also don’t tell us about historical price gaps between Calgary and Edmonton, with Calgary prices usually being $50,000 to $60,000 higher than Edmonton. In the end, determining a home’s value is a complicated business!
Interested in a free home evaluation? Give me a call today at 780-910-9669 or email me at barry@barryt.ca.
