While looking for a photo to post in today’s blog, I came to a serious realization: I haven’t traveled enough in Canada yet.
I haven’t been to Vancouver since 1987. I was seven years old and went skiing in Whistler with my dad and sister.
I haven’t been to Quebec since 2008. I was twenty-eight years old and went skiing in Mont Tremblant with my friends.
I’ve never been to Alberta. That’s really sad.
I’ve never been to the east coast. That’s pretty sad too.
In fact, I’ve never been to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territoy or Nunavut.
I suppose it would have been more efficient to simply say I only left my home province to visit BC and Quebec, but I guess I should mention every name other province was a good way for me to show myself what I’m missing.
When I think about visiting other places in the country, my evaluation criteria are based on stereotypes.
If I go east, it’s for seafood. I’m allergic to shellfish, so it might not be the best reason to visit Nova Scotia.
When I go to the prairies, it’s for the Rush. I’ve spent a lot of time in Wyoming over the years, so I’ve seen more than a few rodeos.
If I go to the west coast, that’s it ski. I grew up skiing, but haven’t been on a hill since 2011. And I haven’t taught it to my kids yet, so that’s why Unpleasant go skiing, or the reason not Unpleasant.
When I go to the Yukon, it’s simply to visit the people who criticized me in my infamous February 2022 blog: “Pack your bags: we’re moving to the Yukon!” Oh man, I haven’t read those comments in three years! I forgot how bad they were…
I’ve been there thirty-two of the fifty states in the United States of America, but I have not been to Calgary.
Get out your cheese grater and get this maple leaf tattoo off my back!
Over the years, we here at Toronto Realty Blog have looked at prices across the country countless times, probably examining every metric there is.
One year, five years, ten years, twenty years.
Appreciation, depreciation.
Provinces, cities.
And just about everything in between.
I feel like now is a good time for a refresher course.
Why now?
Well, it’s the intersection of a few different thoughts in my head:
-We are halfway through the autumn market
-We are more than three years past our real estate peak
-We have seen interest rates drop from 5.00% to 2.50%
-Affordability has improved
-Consumer confidence has not improved
-It’s been five years since COVID started
All in all, I wonder what the following market metric would show us:
What does the house price index look like year after year?
It’s simple. One year.
September 2024 vs. September 2025; How have prices evolved in cities and counties across the country?
Fair warning, folks: this might contradict a lot of your expectations. It certainly did for me!
Using the CREA HPI, which is no average sales price of a housebut rather an index that measures house price levels and trends more accurately, while eliminating both volatility and seasonality, I want to look at how prices have developed in just twelve months.
Let’s look at the provinces first, keeping in mind that CREA does not provide data for Manitoba, Yukon, NWT or Nunavut:
Like I said, the results contradict what many of us had thought.
Raise your hand if you expected Newfoundland and Labrador to top the market valuation list?
Are there hands?
Maybe, maybe not.
But besides, raise your hand if you were expecting to see Ontario at the bottom from this list.
Looking back, I believe some of you raised your hands.
But I also wonder who would have predicted that in six of the nine provinces one increase in the HPI? We constantly hear about how poorly the Canadian real estate market is performing, so does this come as a surprise?
Last but not least, who would have thought British Columbia would outperform Ontario by so much, let alone at all? A modest 2.7% decline in HPI seems insignificant for the province of British Columbia when compared to a whopping 6.7% decline here in Ontario.
As for Where prices are moving in British Columbia and by how much, let’s see:
If I can stereotype again, it looks like that hippies are leading the way on Vancouver Island, with a significant increase of 2.8% year-on-year. Maybe there’s just a lot of demand from city people who want to move west and live on an island?
Vancouver is down 3.2% seems That seems logical given everything we’re hearing about the market, even though Victoria is up 1.6% and these two areas were previously pretty much the same.
All in all, I think most British Columbians would “accept” a 2.7% year-over-year decline, given the incessant news cycle showing that the entire country’s real estate market has gone to hell.
As for the cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, this also quite surprised me:
Is there ask for homes in Saskatoon?
Based on the 7.4% year-over-year increase in the HPI, this appears to be the case.
Winnipeg too!
These two cities – Saskatoon and Winnipeg – also usually walk hand in hand. And as far as I can say I have no experience traveling around the country, I Doing know a guy who moved from Saskatoon to Winnipeg, but kept the house in Saskatoon (along with another thirty “doors” as he calls it, as a real estate investor…).
While you might think that calgary and edmonton should also run hand in hand, remember calgary saw enormous appreciation during the 2022 boom, when Ontario speculators bought property there sight unseen. It seems like prices would drop faster in Calgary than in Edmonton, but watch the gap continue to close.
As for Atlantic Canada, this is where I experience the biggest shock:
First of all I had to put (NL) and (NB) in brackets for those of you (incl me) who still can’t keep St. John’s and Saint John clear in their heads, despite years of being raked over the coals about it in public school…
Everywhere you look in Atlantic Canada, the prices are upwards.
The trend in many of the cities we examine today seems to say, “Cheaper cities appreciate more quickly,” and the chart above speaks to this. Overall, these cities are cheaper than most cities in British Columbia and Ontario. But when it comes to these five cities, it’s not surprising that the most expensive (Halifax) has the lowest rating.
Wow, St. John’s for the win, huh?
I can hear the violin playing all the way here…
Now let’s go to Quebec, where You might experience a bigger shock than I did watching Atlantic Canada, but to each their own…
I’ll be honest: I have absolutely no idea where or what “Mauricie” is. It looks like my friend Maurice misspelled his name, but apparently it’s a beautiful area of Quebec where the HPI has risen by double digits in the past year.
These Quebec city appreciation numbers are absolutely astonishing!
That makes the following diagram so incredibly difficult to understand.
In reality, each An of the charts we looked at above makes the following chart difficult to understand.
Let’s look at the province of Ontario, where twenty-three of twenty-nine cities or towns are in red numbers:
Surprise!
And on that note, which of the following came as a bigger surprise to you:
1) Price increases in Quebec cities and towns are in double digits
2) Atlantic Canada is on fire
3) British Columbia is ahead of Ontario
4) Ontario is bleeding into the red
Tough question, and there is no right or wrong answer here.
I think a lot of what we’ve seen today is a factor of how quickly prices have moved from 2019 to 20222, and also how the cost of living may be lower or higher in different parts of the country, and thus why net migration in Ontario is declining.
I’ll leave you with this final thought of a publication by the Fraser Institute:
During the four-year period from 2020/21 to 2023/24 (the last year of available data), 277,299 people migrated to Ontario from other provinces or territories, while 381,725 left Ontario to move to another province or territory. Put another way, Ontario saw a net loss of 104,426 people compared to the rest of Canada.
We can further break down this data by age. Looking at working age individuals (15-64), Ontario experienced a net loss of 80,323 people between 2020/21 and 2023/24. Looking further, roughly 39 percent (40,608 individuals) of the total net loss over those four years were young individuals between the ages of 20 and 34.
If you’ve moved from Ontario in the last four years, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
If you live in any of the cities or towns listed in the charts above, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
Even if you live in Ontario and have a perspective to share, I’d love to hear from you too.
Happy Monday everyone!
#Canadian #real #estate #landscape #yearoveryear #Toronto #Realty #Blog