New Housing Price Index YoY

The New Housing Price Index Year over Year (YoY) measures builders' selling prices for new houses. Statistics Canada (StatCan) runs it monthly as survey number 2310 through an electronic questionnaire. It covers new single, semi-detached and townhomes in 27 census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with matched-model pricing.

It excludes resale homes, condos, custom-built houses and sales taxes like GST, QST and HST. Economists use it to track construction, compare new versus resale markets and feed inflation and national accounts.

Responses are usually collected over 10 days starting on the 15th of the reference month, or the next business day. Statistics Canada (StatCan) publishes it monthly in The Daily at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on weekdays except holidays, about 3 weeks after month end.

Each release shows index levels with month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY) changes, charts, a methods box and a next-release date. It also links the Technical Guide and housing dashboards, and the release schedule sets the exact date. The index is never revised and is not seasonally adjusted.

StatCan points to 5 forces that lift or drag builders' prices.

• Toronto, 23.15%: new-house price moves in the Toronto region, the largest weight in the national index.
• Vancouver, 19.53%: new-house price moves in the Vancouver region, the second largest weight.
• Calgary, 10.86%: new-house price moves in the Calgary region, a western weight.
• Ottawa-Gatineau Ontario part, 7.8%: new-house price moves in that Ontario region near the capital.
• Edmonton, 7.15%: new-house price moves in the Edmonton region in Alberta.
• Other regions, 31.51%: price moves across the 22 smaller CMAs combined, including London at 3.44%.

In the release published March 22, 2023 for February 2023, the national index fell 0.2% MoM. It had fallen in 5 of the prior 6 months, with prices down or flat in 25 of 27 CMAs. Yet the YoY rate stayed positive at 1.4%, with the index at 124.9 versus 123.2. That was down from 10.9% a year earlier, when the Bank of Canada rate was 0.25% versus 4.5%.

Cheaper markets still rose YoY: Calgary hit 6.8%, Windsor 4.9% and Ottawa 4.5%, far below 18.7%, 20.7% and 20.2% a year earlier. Toronto fell 0.3% MoM and Vancouver fell 0.1%. Lumber prices had fallen 52.5% YoY, yet unsold new homes were up 44.1% as resale sales fell 40.0%. The house-only part rose 2.0% YoY versus 0.3% for land only. So a positive YoY can hide a monthly slide and a regional split.

1. Collect: builders report each model's transaction price, or list price if unsold, minus taxes and promo value. Online prices without a split use the prior year's house-land shares.
2. Model relative: divide each model's price by its prior-month price; only models priced twice count.
3. City index (Jevons): average model relatives with an equal-weight geometric mean, then chain the result. Example: 3 models with relatives 1.01, 1.0 and 1.02 give a link of 1.00997, about 1.0% on the month. Chained onto a prior index of 124.9, that gives about 126.1. All on a December 2016=100 base.
4. House-land split: average builders' prior-year estimates into house-to-total and land-to-total ratios, with separate yearly weights.
5. National index (Lowe): combine city indexes with fixed Laspeyres weights from 3-year sales averages in CMHC's Market Absorption Survey. Weights update yearly with the January release and link at the overlap month.
6. Replacements and gaps: if a model is replaced, a hedonic regression on size and features over a five-year window sets a like-for-like back price. Late prices carry forward the prior month; empty cities copy the wider region and carry an E flag (use with caution).
7. Final rates, unadjusted: the index is never revised and not seasonally adjusted. MoM equals the index divided by the prior month minus 1, times 100. YoY divides by the same month 12 months ago instead.