Housing prices in Greater Sudbury are expected to remain flat over the next five years, says a report from Moody's Analytics released this week.
Of the major Canadian cities in the survey, Sudbury ranks in the bottom third in the housing price forecast with an expected annual increase of 1.1 per cent, just ahead of Thunder Bay, which is pegged at 0.8 per cent.
That contrasts with the highest growth area, Barrie, where prices are expected to increase an average of 7.9 per cent a year, followed by Toronto and Oshawa, both at 6.7 per cent a year.
On the bottom of the scale, prices in Regina are expected to decline by 1.8 per cent, in Edmonton by one per cent and in Saskatoon by 0.9 per cent.
Prices in Sudbury this year have declined by 1.7 per cent, but are expected to bounce back in the coming year by 1.6 per cent. That's a far cry from five years ago, when sellers were often receiving bids in the city that were higher than asking prices.
Since then, however, nickel and other commodity prices have slumped, cooling off Sudbury's once red-hot real estate market.
Across Ontario, prices have risen 10.4 per cent so far in 2016 and are expected to increase 8.4 per cent in the coming year.
The report was written by Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist at the West Chester office of Moody’s Analytics. He covers the U.S. housing market, residential construction, and U.S. regional economies.
Before joining Moody’s, he taught economics at Texas State University, where he also researched open-economy macroeconomics and income inequality. Moody’s provides credit ratings, research, tools and analysis for global capital markets.
According to Carbacho-Burgos's report, Canadian house prices are expected to increase by nine per cent this year, and by 2.9 per cent annually over the next five years. Condominium prices are forecast to grow by 4.6 per cent this year, and 2.2 per cent a year in the next five years.
