Fraser Valley Housing Price Index

Everyone, media, home owners, Realtors etc. are fascinated with the average price of housing. With 80% of sales within a $200,000 price change it only takes a couple of million dollar properties to skew the average into an unrealistic number.

I like using the Housing Price Index (HPI) as an indication of the market for tow reasons: first, its gives a truer indication of real estate price levels of both the long and short period; second, when doing a market evaluation of a "typical" home I can look at the change in the index between the date a client purchased their house and the date of the evaluation and extrapolate a current price.

The HPI of the three housing categories follow.

The Housing Price Index (HPI), for all detached homes and apartment condos have recovered to within 3 per cent lower than in spring 2008. HPI for all three categories for January 2010 was $446,671 compared to $460,682 in May 2008.

HPI of Fraser Valley Detached Homes increased by 10.8 per cent going from $452,145 in January 2009 to $500,931 in January 2010.

HPI of Fraser Valley Townhouses increased by 7.6 percent going from $295,339 in January 2009 to $317,719 in January 2010.

HPI of Fraser Valley Apartments increased by 10.4 per cent going from $220,595 in January 2009 to $243,470 in January 2010.

The Housing Price Index (HPI) is a tool developed by the Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley Real Estate Boards to measure residential market activity. It tracks and measures the movement of mid-range priced homes for a set time period and provides reliable information on housing price trends since it excludes extremely high and low priced properties.