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New home prices up again!

The resilience of the Canadian housing market is at times astonishing.  According to Statscan, new house prices "edged up again in October".  Year on year data shows that new house prices rose by 2.4%, which is in line with general inflation, and marks the 3 month in a row where prices rose.

Canada's housing sector remains very healthy, and the new home segment is just a further indication of its health. Mortgage securitiziation (that plagued the US housing system) was not prevalent among Canada's largest banks, only the secondary players in Canada's housing market availed themselves of this option (since they didn't have access to retail deposits).

Moreover, Canada mortgage registration system is very different than in the U.S., so none of the American problem could occur -- there is a central registry (in each province) of all liabilities against a property, and there is no concept of limited recourse borrowing in Canada's mortgage market.

As I often discussed, the progression of house prices in Canada going back to 1987 (using the Economist model) show that Canadian house prices are still lower (200) in Canada than in the US (250 FHFA or 225 Case Shiller), moreover, whereas income has been stagnant in the U.S. it has been rising in Canada (high correlation between Income and house prices).

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