Terranet Index Indicates Monthly Price Rise of 0.3% in March for Canadian Home Prices

Canadian home prices in March were up 11.6% from a year earlier, according to the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index™. This acceleration from 12-month rises of 7.5% in January and 9.9% in February is attributable to the deflation that was in progress 12 months earlier. This base effect will continue through the results for April, the anniversary of the index bottom. The composite index in March was up 11.7% from that bottom. However, this gain is strongly influenced by Toronto, up 16.3% from April 2009, and Vancouver, up 14.4% from May 2009. In the four other markets surveyed, the rise from the respective troughs is less than 9%.
Month-over-month increases have recently decelerated considerably. The February and March gains of the composite index, at 0.2% and 0.3%, were the smallest in the 11 months since it began reflating. Contributing to the deceleration was a string of three consecutive monthly declines in Calgary, where March prices were down 0.3% from the month before.