METRO VANCOUVER - House prices continue to surge in the greater Vancouver area, where the price of a typical single-family home has risen by 20 per cent in the last year, hitting $1.2 million in October.

The latest housing price index from the Canadian Real Estate Association shows a 15.33-per-cent jump in the prices of all real estate types in the region between October 2014 and last month. The average sale price of a detached home in Vancouver nearly doubled the national index price of $585,800.

Price gains were slightly more modest for condos, but greater Vancouver still saw the largest jump in prices in the country at 11.39 per cent. A typical apartment sold for $425,800 last month.

Gregory Klump, the CREA’s chief economist, predicts that prices for single-family homes in urban B.C. and Ontario will continue to rise more steeply than those of condos for the foreseeable future.

“The balance between supply and demand is generally tighter for single detached homes than it is for condo apartments, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon,” he said in a press release.

Sale prices in the Toronto and Vancouver real estate markets continue to outpace those in the rest of the country, pushing the national average sale price to an 8.3-per-cent increase in the last year. Prices in the remainder of Canada rose by just 2.5 per cent in the year leading up to October.

BMO chief economist Doug Porter said the housing market has split into three groups, with Toronto and Vancouver too hot for comfort, the Prairies hit by the sliding price of oil and a middle ground which includes places like Ottawa and Montreal.

Porter described Vancouver’s 19.3-per-cent year-over-year gain in the number of sales out of this world.

"If anything, October saw an even greater divergence of Vancouver from the rest of the country (and perhaps planet Earth)," he wrote.

Across the country, the number of home sales rose by 1.8 per cent from September to October of this year, hitting the second-highest monthly level in close to six years, according to the CREA.

Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina all posted double-digit sales declines in October. Calgary's housing sales are down 36.4 per cent from a year earlier.

"The renewed sag in oil in recent months looks to have triggered a renewed weakening in housing markets across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan," Porter said.

With files from The Canadian Press

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