The Party Hasn't Stopped Up North
In parts of Canada, there's hardly a hint of a housing slowdown. In Alberta for instance, new home prices in Calgary were up 29.6% from a year ago and jumped 5.9% in March alone. Edmonton new home prices were up 14.3% from a year ago. According to the latest data from the Calgary Real Estate Board, the average sale price of an existing home is up 37.1% over last year. According to analysts, Alberta's gains were responsible for half of the 7.6% increase in homes across all of Canada. Without the Alberta numbers, Canadian new home prices would have been up 4.1% in March from a year earlier. Analysts attribute much of this rise to the oil boom and what they call a shortage of serviceable lots.
All is not all rosy though on the other side of the country, though....
Canada has become a tale of two markets, the east and the west. A new forecast from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Wednesday called for new home construction to rise in 2006 in most of the western provinces but slide in the rest of the country.
"CMHC is now predicting 45,000 new homes will be constructed in Alberta this year, up from 40,847 in 2005. British Columbia is forecast to jump to 37,000 from 34,667. By comparison, Ontario new home construction is expected to fall to 75,000 this year from 78,795. In Quebec, CMHC expects only 45,000 new homes to be built compared with 50,910 last year."
"When you do the comparisons, Atlantic Canada and Central Canada seems to floundering while Western Canada is flourishing," said Brent Weimer, a senior economist with CMHC
