The Teranet-National Bank HPI jumped 2.4% in April to a new all-time high. This marks 18 straight monthly increases. Its recent vigour coincides with historically high numbers of home sales in most regions of Canada, coupled with limited supply. As such, market conditions remain very much in favour of sellers and consequently price growth. After seasonal adjustment the monthly jump of the unsmoothed HPI was slightly weaker – 2.0%, bringing the unsmoothed index to a whopping cumulative gain of 14.3% since last June (left chart). The rapid pace of home price growth continues in the great majority of large Canadian cities, with prices up 10% or more from a year earlier in an unprecedented 87% of the 32 urban markets surveyed (right chart). It should be noted that annual price growth for single-family homes continues to outpace the condo segment. The latter continues to lag as the shift of preferences has tilted buyers from small dwellings in city centers to larger homes in the suburbs. This divergence may not last for long as mortgage interest rates have increased, and affordability has deteriorated in the non-condo segment (link).

May 2021