Nationally, new home prices were up 0.1 percent year over year in October, the smallest annual increase since January 2010, according to new data from Statistics Canada.
In October, new home buyers in 16 of the 27 census metropolitan areas surveyed saw flat or lower prices. Prices at the national level have remained largely unchanged since November 2017.
New home buyers in Toronto saw prices fall 0.1 percent in October, while prices were flat in Vancouver. Tighter mortgage regulations as well as provincial interventions, mostly targeting the Toronto and Vancouver housing markets, have likely contributed to the slowdown in new home prices in these historically expensive CMAs.
The pace of new home construction has also slowed in both CMAs. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, single-family housing starts were down year to date in October, compared with the same period in 2017 in both Toronto (-40.3 percent) and Vancouver (-11.9 percent). Single-family homes include row, single and semi-detached houses.
