Simon Doyle
Sun
New housing prices stayed flat in Vancouver in June while they rose 0.9 per cent in Victoria, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.
The price of new houses nationally rose by 0.8 per cent during June, following a similar increase of 0.5 per cent in May and continuing a steady rise since 1998. “It’s a good increase for one month. It’s not huge,” said Randy Sterns, an analyst at Statistics Canada. “I’ve read articles that there’s a building bubble and things are just going to die all of a sudden, but we haven’t seen that. It’s been pretty steady, and if there’s been any decreases it’s been moderate.”
The last time the price of new houses dropped, month over month, was in September 1998, and then only slightly, he said.
The steady rise in prices is part of an overall demand for houses in the midst of a favourable labour market and low mortgage rates, Sterns said. A contributing factor in the price increases, he added, is a shortage of land in some cities, such as Winnipeg, where prices for new houses increased three per cent during June.
June prices increased significantly in Edmonton (1.6 per cent), Calgary (1.3 per cent) and Toronto and Oshawa (1.2 per cent), which Statistics Canada attributed to the high cost of building materials, labour and land. Prices over the year, since June 2004, have increased 4.7 per cent. The June price changes were lowest in Hamilton, where prices dropped by 0.2 per cent because buyers negotiated prices on a number of new, unsold houses on the market, Sterns said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005