Michael Kane
Sun
Federal statistics suggesting new home prices are topping out in Greater Vancouver were dismissed Tuesday by local market watchers.
Numbers from Statistics Canada show the prices of single detached, attached and row houses up just 3.6 per cent over the 12 months to February, 2005. That’s less than half the 7.7-per-cent growth in prices recorded for new homes in Victoria, and behind the pace set by every other major market in Canada.
Further, new home prices in the Vancouver area have risen just 2.8 per cent in Vancouver since 1997, according to StatsCan’s new housing price index released Tuesday.
In fact, the price of a standard home, both new and old, has risen about 70 per cent over the past eight years, according to realtors Royal LePage.
Industry experts say the StatsCan numbers are skewed because they exclude condominiums and focus on new home construction on greenfield sites in the outer suburbs.
“Their index is horribly off for Vancouver as a general rule,” said Tsur Somerville, director of the Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate at the University of B.C.‘s Sauder School of Business. “They look at the price of a new home but don’t control for where the new home is built. Most new homes are built in the valley and over the last 10 years they have been built further and further out in the valley.”
In the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area, the median new home price rose 10 per cent from $455,000 to $500,000 in the 12 months to February, said Cameron Muir, senior market analyst with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. The median is the mid-range point of all sales.
Over the same period, the average price rose 18 per cent from $496,421 to $588,000.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
