More statement of the obvious, by Stats Canada that new housing prices year over year are up 6.2% year over year in December. Interesting the Land prices in the housing price is actually up 6.6% year over year. Where was it most expensive to buy a new house?
- Sakatoon
- Regina
- Edmonton
Interestingly in Ottawa/Gatineau it was only up around 0.6% year over year, which might be due to the GLUT of houses in the area. Who is buying all these houses is my question?
Employment and Such
The unemployment and employment numbers came out on Friday. We are back down to 5.8% which is back to the historically low numbers we have been seeing lately, and the seasonally adjusted employment numbers are very good as well.
I like to quote these numbers since I really don’t understand a lot of the other economic indicators that pundits talk about, but I do understand employment and inflation (ok I don’t completely understand their counting, but I at least can grasp these numbers).
These are interesting numbers considering most of the news in Ottawa has been jobs disappearing in the High Tech sector and a few other areas, so I wonder whether the unemployment numbers may move up soon?
You don’t happen to know if they are tracking existing home sales in the same way that new home sales are listed here? I find these a little hard to compare since in many areas just because the homes are getting bigger and using expensive materials the new home index is higher.
For example, in the Saint John, Fredericton, and Moncton index it shows 1997 -> 2007 as only increasing by 15.1% since 1997 (1.4% dec 06 to 07). Though if you look at the CREA website for home sales price from Dec 06 to 07 you see Fredericton with an increase of 4.4% and Saint John at 6.0%. That’s a pretty huge difference. (Moncton isn’t on the CREA page)