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“There is data on the real estate market, but the problem is that it is inconsistent. A number of studies had been done, but with no conclusions, because of missing information.”

In order to build the robust national database, McCarrell and his team are tapping both private and public sources, as well as pre-existing statistics such as census records.

Statistics Canada’s public partners include provincial governments, land title authorities and non-for-profit organizations. The private sources cannot be named as per their agreements with the government agency.

“Private sources have a business model, commercialized data, so we have to make sure that we are not stepping on their toes,” said Anik Lacroix, an assistant director at Statistics Canada. “The issue is the limitations of agreements, it is how we release data, but asking private sources to provide more data is not a problem.”

Once the data is acquired, McCarrell said it must also be cleaned and packaged in such a way that it is consistent and can be of use to researchers and policy makers.

“For many middle class Canadians, their home is the most important investment they will make in their lifetime. As such, it is critical to their financial well-being that this investment be protected. HSF represents a significant jump forward in the quality and type of data available and will yield significant ongoing benefits by enhancing the ability of housing participants (and) commentators, to monitor and analyze the housing market,” said David Barnabe, a spokesperson of federal Finance Department, in an email statement.