Blessed by the Potato

Just a week after putting out a release saying that the bank economists were wrong and that Canada won’t have price declines, CREA has come out with another release revising their earlier statement. They now predict prices to decline nationally through 2011, driven by (unstated) declines in BC and Ontario. For those in Ontario and BC (which is pretty much all of my readers AFAIK) this means it really isn’t time to buy a house now — even the CREA thinks it’ll be a terrible idea!

All provinces are forecast to post modest average price gains in 2011, except British Columbia and Ontario. The forecast decline in activity is sharpest in these two provinces… The national average price is forecast to decline by 2.2 per cent in 2011 as a result.

So even though they’re calling for the rest of the country to go up, the declines in Ontario and BC will be enough for the overall national average to be pulled into negative territory (and remember that CREA is generally one of the most bullish sources of predictions!).