1 min. read

A very strong Canadian housing market, with prices rising consistently especially in Canada’s major cities, was perhaps less expected after last year’s new mortgage insurance guidelines.

Nevertheless, compared to a slowly recovering US market, Canada has been rolling in 2014, with median house prices slightly passing the $400,000 threshold in September, a 5.9% year-over-year price gain. The US national average is $219,800, which is almost half the Canadian average price.

But perhaps one of the best illustrations of the significant home price gap between these two countries is provided by the real estate markets in neighbouring cities which lie on different sides of the border.

We’ve looked at several of these cities and created a graphic showing the differences in median asking prices. Do the numbers surprise you?



The most impressive differences we found were in Vancouver ($629,800 CAD in median asking price) and Seattle ($530,000 CAD in median asking price). Although they are really close geographically and similar in terms of size and economy, the difference in median home asking prices is almost $100,000 CAD. In the case of Niagara Falls, CA and Niagara Falls, US, the median asking price is even more astounding: $236,950 CAD in the Canadian part compared to only $67,045 CAD in the US part.