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Vancouver Housing Price Index Bucks National Trend

Vancouver: A Drag On Housing Prices
Flickr: Ian.Kobylanski

Vancouver is fast becoming the deadbeat of Canada's housing market as numbers released by Statistics Canada show that the West Coast city lags much of the country when it comes to housing prices.

Statistics Canada's new housing price indexes for August 2012 show that while the country's housing price index went up by 2.4 per cent between 2011 and 2012, Vancouver's dropped by 0.4 per cent and Victoria's fell by three per cent, the steepest drop in Canada.

Meanwhile, the biggest rise in the housing price index was in Toronto and Oshawa, where it went up by 4.7 per cent, followed closely by Winnipeg at 4.4 per cent.

The StatsCan report also showed little change for Vancouver and Victoria when it came to the new housing price index month-over-month.

Canada's overall new housing price index rose 0.2 per cent from July to August but Vancouver's didn't change and all and Victoria's dropped by 0.4 per cent. The biggest change in this period came in Quebec, where the index rose by 0.6 per cent.

The new housing price index is a measure of change over time in the selling price of new residential properties that have been agreed by a contractor and a buyer at the time of purchase. It does not include any value added taxes such as B.C.'s Harmonized Sales Tax (HST).

Statistics Canada noted that when B.C. goes back to the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) system that the tax on building materials will be embedded in the selling prices of new properties,

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