I have been paying close attention to articles since August of 2010, trying to get a feel for the consensus as to where prices were going to be for 2011.
To my surprise I have noticed a real Join the Band Wagon type of articling using statistics and facts to skew results and complement their thoughts. This Homer Simpson approach may be safe and fill content in papers, but it offers little comfort to the consumer. I have found it quite frustrating to see that in most articles writers tend to go with the flow at the time and copy/paste/re-write many pieces with no direct message coming out. If prices go down or up in the future they tend to be right. Once someone brings forth more statistics they change their next article and their mind. It feels like the few at the top are trickling down statements and statistics to balance certain budgets and control overall economic conditions, playing with the public the way children play with puppets. In my 24 years of Real Estate, the one thing that I’m sure of is that the media has an incredible amount of power and control and from what I have seen it tends to be wrong more times than not. My positive forecast for 2011 was mainly based on the negative forecasts that were selling papers last summer. A 10% increase in Real Estate Values for the downtown core (conservative) combined with the fact that we are only nearing 1/2 the value pricing that we should be at and that we should reach this goal by 2016. With respective agencies and associations quoting at one point a 10% decline. This spread was 20%. Now we see these organizations coming out with new data supporting a 1-4% increase. By November 2011, I believe they will all announce that had predicted the 10% + gains in Real Estate Value all along. My forecasts are based on the current demand, the response to global recession, the increased immigration and relaxed rules to it and what I get from the sources that I trust most, you, my clients, the people who actually make the final decisions and take all of the risks. Media Spinning sells papers and controls speculation, allowing government organizations, banks, and insurance companies along with other powerful lobbies to control and manipulate conditions to best suit their goals. Why should we be surprised to here this, did you think the information given to you was out of the kindness of their hearts and for your best interest?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian house prices rose in the fourth quarter and will climb at a moderate pace this year, while overall sales may drop slightly, Royal LePage, Canada’s biggest residential real state broker, said on Thursday.

In the last quarter of 2010, the average price of a single detached bungalow was up 4.6 percent from a year earlier at C$324,531, Royal LePage said. A standard two-storey detached home rose 4.4 percent to C$360,329, while a standard condominium was up 3.9 percent at C$226,746.

Biggest gains were seen in the cities of Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and St. John’s.

Royal LePage forecast the average price of a home will rise 3 percent in 2011 to C$348,600. It said sales will fall by 2 percent.

“Trends in the housing market continue to be driven by the lingering after-effects of the recession,” said Phil Soper, president and chief executive of Royal LePage Real Estate Services.

“Canadians realize that interest rates are unsustainably low and that homes will become effectively more expensive when mortgage rates return to normal levels.”

The Canadian housing market has cooled off in recent months after helping to lead the economy out of recession in 2009 and early 2010 in a move so pronounced it sparked speculation that a bubble might be forming.

Royal LePage said it expects the strongest provincial performance in 2011 to be in Alberta and the most price appreciation to be in mid-sized urban cities such as Winnipeg.

It also highlighted St. John’s and Fredericton, New Brunswick, as cities where homes are the most affordable.
It expects the average price increases in Toronto, the country’s financial center, to be slim at 1 percent.

Soper said that more price appreciation and transactions are likely in the first half of the year as buyers rush into the market in advance of what are expected to be higher interest rates later in the year.

“However, housing market activity in the first half of 2011 will be modestly closer to the norm, as last year’s phenomenon was exacerbated by mid-year tightening of mortgage accessibility and the introduction of HST (harmonized sales tax) in Ontario and British Columbia,” Soper said.

($1=$1.00 Canadian)

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; editing by Peter Galloway)