Average Canadian house prices are losing steam but are still set to rise 3.5 per cent by the end of this year, following a “solid” second quarter, real estate brokerage Royal LePage Real Estate Services says.
However the number of sales will slip about 11.5 per cent from 2007's record levels, the Toronto firm said Thursday.
The survey of 17 cities showed that on a national basis, the average price of a bungalow climbed by 5.6 per cent to $351,587, while standard two-story houses rose 5.2 per cent to an average of $418,943, Royal LePage said.
The survey is a little more upbeat than one released two days ago by the Canadian Real Estate Association. It showed that in June, the average price of a resale home fell by 0.4 per cent from a year earlier, marking the first national, year-over-year monthly drop since January 1999.
Still, like the CREA, Royal LePage found prices fell in Alberta, with the tag on an average Edmonton bungalow, for instance, plunging 14.5 per cent to $320,000, while that on an average Calgary two-story dropped 6 per cent to $437,744.
The firm attributed this to a “surge in inventory” in “Alberta's white-hot market.”
Next door in commodity-fuelled Saskatchewan, by contrast, prices continued to soar, with the average two-story in Saskatoon leaping 27.2 per cent to $388,000 and the average Regina bungalow up 36.7 per cent to $278,850.
Gains in the big three, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, were more modest. Ottawa bungalows, for instance, were up an average 4.3 per cent to $316,167, two-story houses in Toronto rose an average of 5.6 per cent to $564,228 and an average of 4.8 per cent to $336,443 in Montreal, Royal LePage said.
“We have been pleasantly surprised that strong fundamentals, such as enduringly positive employment numbers and reasonable mortgage rates, have countered increasingly pessimistic consumer sentiment, based primarily on the American housing recession,” Phil Soper, the firm's president and chief executive officer, said in a news release.
“After several years characterized by a persistent shortage of listings, home buyers have felt the pressure of bidding wars and take-it-or-leave-it counter offers ease during 2008; home sellers have had to come to grips with the longer time it is taking to sell properties, but can take comfort in a market that continues to support reasonable price increases. Read more