Sauder Data

Figures lie and liars figure, right? The best way to handle that is to let everyone draw their own conclusions from the numbers and discuss them.

When prices first began running up a few years ago, the obvious question many Realtors asked was "How long will this last?" That led to the second obvious question "What, aside from a new government and improving economy, is the cause of this run up?"

One answer among several was that we were simply catching up. Price appreciation had been stagnant for so long that an increase in price was something to be expected. (This is sort of the opposite, or for some people, evil twin, of the "borrowing demand from the future" explanation).

Is there any truth to the idea? I'll let you decide that for yourselves. The Sauder School of Business at UBC provides lots of housing data on the local market and presents them in tables and graphs.

One of the more interesting is a real vs. nominal price graph, based on 2004 Q2 figures.