Bad time to buy? Hamilton home price up 2% in August

BY DUY HUYNH

There are the fours years of work to finish, the internship, and then finding a full time job in your field. Then, barring all of those are worked out, the housing market could be a tricky one for recent post grads to get into.

Hamilton is one of four city markets to have increased their market price above the countrywide index.

Increasing 2 per cent over the last month, they are ahead of Vancouver (1.7 per cent) and behind Toronto (2.8 per cent) and Victoria (2.2 per cent). Market prices rose 1.5 per cent across the country.

“It’s hard to know when it’s the ‘right time’ to invest in a home,” says Vi Tran, 26, a potential homebuyer in the Greater Toronto Area. “Some advisors have told me to buy now before the market rises again, while others are telling me to wait it out until the market settles back down.” According to a report from the National Bank of Canada and Teranet, Hamilton’s market prices have risen in each of the last six months.

A Hamilton area real estate broker for Keller Williams Complete Reality, Christopher Henderson believes the rising market rates will begin to fluctuate down to lower numbers sooner or later.

“The real estate market is an unpredictable one,” says Henderson, “In Hamilton’s case, these are beginning to become unsustainable numbers, even for the foreign buyer market,”

A recent report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation suggest Hamilton is one of Canada’s “strongly overvalued” cities.

The Teranet index released this week says prices increased marginally last month in Ottawa-Gatineau (0.8 per cent), Halifax (0.7 per cent) and Edmonton (0.4 per cent) Meanwhile, prices were down from the month before in Winnipeg (−0.1 per cent), Calgary (−0.2 per cent), Montreal (−0.8 per cent) and Quebec City (−1.9 per cent).