AI Analysis: New housing price index, monthly

Executive Summary

Canada's New Housing Price Index has risen 218.1% over 45 years, climbing from 38.2 in January 1981 to 121.5 in January 2026, with the steepest surges occurring during the late-1980s boom and the post-2020 COVID-era rally. Across 64,920 records spanning 40 geographic regions and three index categories, house prices are the dominant driver of the total index, correlating at r=0.973 with the combined Total (house and land) measure. Regional disparities are significant, with top-performing areas far outpacing the lowest-ranked regions in average index values since the 2016 base year.

Key Findings

• Canada's Total (House & Land) New Housing Price Index surged 218.1% over 45 years, from 38.2 in January 1981 to 121.5 in January 2026, with the all-time peak reaching 126.1 in August 2022.
• House only prices are the primary driver of the total index, with a near-perfect correlation of r=0.973 between the two, while Land only also correlates strongly at r=0.916 with the total.
• The House Only category has the highest average index value (mean: 81.3, median: 85.6) and widest spread (std: 31.41), ranging from 20.7 to a maximum of 212.4 across all records.
• The most statistically anomalous single-month move in the dataset was March 1987 (+3.10% month-over-month, Z-score of 5.92), followed by COVID-era spikes in February 2021 (+1.93%, Z=3.51) and April 2021 (+1.87%, Z=3.40).
• Approximately 10,826 values (~17% of records) are missing, primarily because several geographic regions lack data for earlier decades, reflecting the gradual expansion of Statistics Canada's coverage over time.
• The dataset covers 40 geographic regions across Canada, with the top 10 highest-ranked regions showing substantially stronger long-term average index values compared to the bottom 10, highlighting persistent regional housing price inequality.
• All three index categories show medians above their means, indicating a slight left-skew consistent with decades of low historical values gradually giving way to accelerating price growth, particularly post-2016.