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TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian home prices rose in May, led by the Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto markets, but underlying numbers reflected a slowing in the housing market following measures taken to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, data showed on Wednesday.
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The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, which tracks data collected from public land registries to measure changes for repeat sales of single-family homes, showed prices were up 1.1% in May from April.
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Prices rose in eight of the 11 metropolitan areas in the index, with the national capital region of Ottawa-Gatineau up 2.2% and Toronto, Canada\’s most populous metropolitan area, gaining 2.1%.
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Compared with the same month a year ago, the index climbed by 6%, its strongest pace since April 2018. It was the 10th consecutive month that the year-over-year gain accelerated, said Marc Pinsonneault, a senior economist at National Bank of Canada.
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Still, a couple of underlying numbers, such as a 22% year-over-year drop in the number of repeat sales used to derive indexes, showed signs of a slowdown in the housing market, Pinsonneault said.
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Restrictive measures to combat the pandemic began to lift in Canada in May, but data from land registries could lag the timing of sales transactions.
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(Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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