The Cana­dian Press

Home prices crept higher in March as a slow­ing Van­cou­ver mar­ket was off­set by an accel­er­a­tion in prices in Cal­gary, Toronto and Mon­treal, accord­ing to a report by the Cana­dian Real Estate Association.

The MLS home price index was up 1.3% in March on an month-over-month basis and up 5.1%% com­pared with a year ago.

“Over­all price trends show that Canada’s hous­ing mar­ket con­tin­ues to mod­er­ate,” asso­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wayne Moen said.

“Price increases have been shrink­ing since last fall. While that trend paused in March, it may in part reflect an early spring in many parts of the coun­try, result­ing in increased com­pe­ti­tion among buyers.”

The index is based on prices for one– and two-storey sin­gle fam­ily homes, town­houses and apart­ments in sev­eral key mar­kets across the country.

The report found that price gains for sin­gle fam­ily homes were 6.4%, roughly that for town­houses or apart­ments, that came in a 2.6% and three% respectively.

Prices were up in all of the mar­kets tracked, led by Toronto which saw a 7.3% gain com­pared with a year ago, well ahead of Van­cou­ver, which was sec­ond at 5.27% from a year ago.

On a month-over-month basis, Toronto was up 1.65% for March, tra­di­tion­ally a busy month for real estate sales, com­pared with Van­cou­ver at 1.06%.

Mon­treal gained 1.49% and Cal­gary climbed 1.41% in March.

The rise in the index fol­lowed a CREA report ear­lier this month that the aver­age price of a Cana­dian home sold in March fell for the first time since Jan­u­ary, a move attrib­uted to an unusu­ally large num­ber of lux­ury prop­er­ties sold in Van­cou­ver last year.

The national aver­age home resale price in March was $369,677, down from just under $373,000 in Feb­ru­ary and $371,591 in March 2011.

The decrease came as the num­ber of sales con­ducted through the industry’s MLS sys­tem was up 2.5% from Feb­ru­ary, mak­ing last month the busiest sales month since April 2010.

Toronto’s aver­age res­i­den­tial price last month was $504,117 — up from $456,147 in March 2011. Vancouver’s aver­age res­i­den­tial price in March was $761,742, down from $786,311 in the same month last year.

—————————————————————————————————–
Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–

Related posts:

1. Canada resale home price index up sharply in April Cana­dian home resale prices rose in April for a 12^th…
2. Canada home resale price index up, no crash seen Cana­dian home resale prices climbed in March for an 11^th…
3. Home prices up in Feb­ru­ary but gains slow­ing A num­ber of new con­do­minium apart­ment projects have been completed…
4. Canada June home price index rises for 7^th month Cana­dian home resale prices rose in June, their sev­enth consecutive…
5. Canada resale home price index up for 13^th month Cana­dian home resale prices rose for a 13^th straight month…