Housing diving in Canada but costs to build upThe Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that while February's housing report from the Canadian Real Estate Association contained "green shoots" that suggest the market may be stabilizing, it also cemented this as the steepest house price correction nationally in decades. The Globe's Jason Kirby writes that according to CREA data, the typical home in Canada has fallen by $132,000, or 15.7 per cent since February, 2022. The drop is actually worse once the corrosive effect of inflation on purchasing power is factored in. In real, or inflation-adjusted, terms, national house prices have fallen nearly $168,000, a more-than-19-per-cent decline. Inflation adjustments are not something homeowners typically factor into their view of real estate prices. One reason is that it did not matter much before. With annual inflation averaging around 1.6 per cent in the years prior to the pandemic, house price comparisons from one year to the next held more meaning. Meanwhile, even though real prices are now just 5.5 per cent higher than in April, 2017, bigger mortgages and higher interest rates mean ownership costs eat up 60 per cent of average household incomes now, compared with 44 per cent then, according to RBC Economics.