The gap between the average price of a home in Canada and the U.S. widened to a record level in the first quarter of this year, contrary to what economists would have expected, reports The Globe and Mail.
Average Canadian home prices were 66 per cent above average U.S. prices during the first three months of this year, according to the Bank of Montreal’s chief economist Doug Porter.
“Contrary to all expectations, the Canadian housing market has just kept on rolling in 2014 even as the U.S. housing market has paused for breath (after a steep climb out of the dungeon),” he writes in a research note.
Many economists were surprised by the strength that Canadian home prices showed in the face of the steep sales drop that began in the summer of 2012. And they're surprised again now that the slump in sales over the cold winter months hasn’t had more of an impact on prices.
