5 Canadian Cities Where House Prices Are Lower Than A Year Ago

House prices have been rising at a breakneck speed in Toronto and Vancouver, but most the rest of the country’s major real estate markets have been in a slump, according to new data from the Teranet-National Bank house price index.

The index was up 5.6 per cent over the same month last year, mostly due to price hikes for single-family homes in Toronto and Vancouver.

“The dichotomy of the Canadian residential market is more obvious than ever,” National Bank senior economist Marc Pinsonneault wrote.

“On one side, 12-month price increases over 8 per cent in Vancouver, Toronto and Hamilton have pushed the Teranet-National Bank National Composite Index to a new record in August for a sixth consecutive month. On the other side, prices in the eight remaining regions have grown overall a mere 0.2 per cent.”

Of the 11 major cities measured in the index, five are now seeing prices that are lower than they were a year ago — a clear sign of a market slump. Those are Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Quebec City and Winnipeg. (See below for a breakdown of numbers.)

Prices in Calgary and Edmonton — two cities hit particularly hard by the oil price collapse — are still up compared to where they were a year ago. But that’s because they only started declining earlier this year, and are now down 2.9 per cent from their peak in Calgary, and 3.4 per cent from their peak in Edmonton.

Here’s a breakdown of Canada’s housing markets and how they fared over the past year, according to the Teranet index.

HALIFAX