Canada’s most expensive new condo markets saw price gains cool in the most recent quarter. Statistics Canada (StatCan) data shows new condo apartment prices saw growth slow in Q2 2019. Both Toronto and Vancouver saw flat to negative price growth in the quarter. Ottawa and Victoria on the other hand, saw prices soar, with the quarter outperforming most market’s annual price movement.
New Condominium Apartment Price Index
The new condo apartment price index (NCAPI) is StatCan’s stab at measuring new condo apartment prices. They take the developer’s sold prices, and measure similar units on a quarterly basis. A price index is then produced, showing inflation adjusted movements over time. It’s similar to CREA’s HPI or Teranet-National Bank’s House Index, but for new condo apartments. The list only includes six cities right now, but hopefully they’ll expand to smaller regions soon.
Ottawa New Condo Prices Make The Biggest Quarterly Jump
Topping the list for quarterly price movement is Ottawa, Victoria, and Montreal. Ottawa saw new condo apartment prices rise 8.4% in Q2 2019, when compared to just a quarter before. Victoria followed with an 8.3% increase in the same quarter, over the same period. Montreal new condo prices made a much more modest climb of 0.5%, when compared to the previous quarter. Considering this is the change over just three months, Ottawa and Victoria are out of control.
Canadian New Condo Apartment Quarterly Price Change
The quarterly percent change in new condo apartment prices.
Source: StatCan, Better Dwelling.
On the bottom half for new condo apartment price performance is Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. Vancouver made the largest decline with a 1.7% drop in Q2 2019, when compared to the previous quarter. Calgary followed with a drop of 1.2% for the quarter. Toronto rounds out the bottom performers, with prices flat from the previous quarter.
Victoria New Condo Prices Make Biggest Gains From Last Year
Looking at a longer period, Victoria, Ottawa, and Vancouver new condo prices made big increases over the past year. Victoria leads with the largest price movement, rising 20.3% in Q2 2019, when compared to a year before. Ottawa made a 12.0% increase compared to last year. Vancouver condo apartments came in third with an increase of 9.2% from last year. These are all massive gains, compared to the market’s historic movements.
Canadian New Condo Apartment 12-Month Price Change
The annual percent change for new condo apartment prices.
Source: StatCan, Better Dwelling.
The largest declines over the past year, weren’t all that large – with Calgary excepted. Calgary’s new condo apartments fell 9.5% in Q2 2019, when compared to last year – the largest drop on the list. Montreal followed with a drop of 1.8% over the same period. In third is Toronto, with an increase of 7.0% from last year. Yes, the third worst performing market on the list would be labeled as bubbly in the countries.
Smaller markets are seeing news condo prices make big gains, while larger markets cool. Toronto and Vancouver, both saw slower (or negative) growth in the most recent quarters. However, a quarter isn’t exactly a trend, and annual gains were still substantial.
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A lot of interesting market inefficiencies in Toronto. Not even developers are making money at these prices, since they’ve inflated the cost of building so much.
Legit question. If Vancouver condo prices are falling on resale, and there’s soft absorption on pre-sales, how are they more expensive than they were last year?
From Stats Can: http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&Id=1250374
“As a consequence of high heterogeneity and incomplete data collection, the accuracy of the pure price signal is unknown.”
Looks like there are a lot of caveats with the data here…
They lose a little on each one and make it up on volume.
A few months ago, a Toronto condo developer told me that it is uneconomical for him to build at current development and construction costs and sale prices.
bullshit!
a condo that was $400k in 2015 in hongcouver is now a million fucking dollars. Are you telling me the developers were not making $$$$ in 2015? Have the building/salaries and all the crap that goes into the matchboxes tripled in 4 years?
Give me a fuckng break with this load of crap!
In Ottawa, it’s better known as ‘people can’t afford house prices at current cost so they buy condos’. Condo prices then inflate.
Will be interesting to see how things shake out in the city of Ottawa if there’s a change in the government.
Guys we need to understand the whole system is unsustainable. The whole economy needs to produce goods or services to sustain itself. All the bubbles are just assest values going beyond their true economic worth as production inputs. Everything ultimately comes down to production and productivity of a society.
If you understand that you will understand Canada is f***ked. First most production, innovation entrepreneurship are done by young people. But our current system drains the life blood of our young families in the form of high taxation to keep boomers alive. Force young families to take on very high debt to buy old crappy places to live from boomers who bought it for 1/10th the price. We are basically sucking the blood from our most productive population and transferring their future to the least productive segment.
By the time young people get old they will not have health care because Canada will be a third world country. We have tons of land in Canada, what we need is use what we have excess of to trade for what we need. IE we should be using affordable housing to get and retain Canadian talent to produce world class companies to generate real wealth. Not sucking the younger generation dry to enrich boomers.
Canada will be third world very soon if we don’t stop this housing cancer.
Young families life blood are drained to build equity for boomers.
Wait … is this a copy paste of yesterdays post? Dang man somebody re-boot the Jupiter bot it’s stuck in a loop ;P
Sorry i was eating my puke which consequently was actually shit i ate that was in fact part puke and food after i again ate too much and puked. We’re just the smartest ape my friend, nothing more. We binge and puke, eat and shit, eat and puke; rinse and repeat. Pure fucking snowflakes who melt under the breath of FOMO and naivety. It isn’t a housing crisis it is a social crisis that will continue unabated. Nom nom nom. BD4L.