Bonus for buyers as mortgage rates fall with prices
Derek Abma
Province
OTTAWA — It’s a good time to buy a house but a bad time to sell one, according to some reports released yesterday.
The most recent Teranet-National Bank composite house-price index — a measure of six major urban markets across Canada — showed house prices in December down 0.6 per cent from a year earlier.
“It confirms that by year end, after more than five years of seller’s-market conditions, Canadian housing as a whole had become a buyer’s market,” National Bank Financial said.
The bright side of this housing downturn for buyers was pointed out by Adrian Mastracci, a portfolio manager with KCM Wealth Management in Vancouver. “Real-estate prices have been coming down from their highs in most areas. So have mortgage rates.
“That can be a winning combination for homebuyers, especially for those taking the first-time plunge,” Mastracci said in a report yesterday.
A Scotia Capital report, measuring prices as recently as January, said prices were down 11 per cent compared with a year earlier, but down a moderate five to six per cent on a regional sales-weighted basis.
The Scotia report forecasts that after a 17-per-cent decline in housing resales in 2008, there will be another 15- to 20-per-cent drop this year.
That’s to be accompanied by a 10-per-cent drop in the average price, which was $303,594 last year, down less than one per cent from the previous year. Housing starts are expected to fall about 26.5 per cent this year after a 7.5-per-cent decline in 2008.
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