New home price index launched to improve data availability

Information about Canadian home prices is about to become more transparent thanks to a new index.

The Resale Residential Property Price Index has been created through a new collaboration between Teranet Inc., National Bank of Canada, and Statistics Canada.

The three-way partnership has built the index to form part of StatsCan’s new Residential Property Price Index (RRPI) which has been released for the first time this week in response to the federal government’s request for better access to housing market data.

"We are very excited to be collaborating with National Bank and Statistics Canada on this endeavor," said John Robinson, Vice-President Commercial Solutions at Teranet. "Our combined strengths and capabilities are ideally suited to deliver new, valuable market insights to Canadians."

The Resale Residential Property Price Index will produce data on the house and condo segments for Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria CMAs.

"We're pleased to partner with Teranet and Statistics Canada in the release of the Resale Residential Property Price Index," said Darren Ablett, Managing Director & Head, Mortgage Business, Global Funding & Treasury at National Bank. "We're committed to providing Canadians with greater insight and analytics in the housing market to support them in the decision-making process. The Resale Residential Property Price Index will help make information on housing even more accessible."

New index stats

The new Residential Property Price Index shows how property prices in the six tracked CMAs have changed over roughly 2-year time periods.

From the first quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2019, residential property prices have increased 9.2% but most of this was before the second quarter of 2018.

Prices for new properties (+6.4%) rose at a slower pace than those of resale properties (+10.5%) but in both sectors, condominium apartment prices (+18.9%) rose at a much faster pace than house prices (+5.8%).

Among the other highlights of the index:

• Prices in Toronto gained 9.8% from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019. This was mostly due to Q2 2017 (excluding condo apartments) with a rise of 8.4%.
• Toronto condo apartments gained 29.8% from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019.
• Ottawa home prices gained 18.4% since Q1 2017. The largest gain (3.9%) was in Q2 2019.
• Vancouver prices were up 9.1% from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019 with condo apartments up 18.9%. But since Q2 2018, overall prices have dropped 5.5%.
• Victoria has seen a 14.3% rise in prices from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019 with new condo apartments prices rising 35.2%, the largest gain nationally.
• Calgary’s residential prices were down 3% from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019 with the sharpest drop occurring in the price of new condo apartments (17.3%).
• Montreal prices were up 14.1% from Q1 2017 to Q3 2019 with the resale homes market contributing the most to this (17.2%).