Canada’s three most watched real estate boards reported January results last week. Vancouver saw strong sales and price growth and a reduction is listings which increased competition among buyers while Toronto also saw strong sales and continued rising prices but with an increase in listings which provided buyers with more choice. In Calgary, prices have so far held on to most of the gains made in 2014 but many buyers are waiting for economic conditions to stabilize before proceeding. This caused a sharp drop in sales volumes in January and a surge of new listings which may create downward pressure on prices.

CMHC published its latest Housing Market Outlook last week which calls for a slight reduction in housing starts, stable resale volumes and annual average price gains of about 1.5% over the next two years.

Statistics Canada released January employment data on Friday which showed that the Canadian economy created more than 35,000 jobs for the month, pushing the unemployment rate down to 6.6%. The US economy posted another strong month, creating 257,000 jobs in January.

The benchmark government of Canada five year bond yield ended the week at 0.79%, up from 0.62% the previous week.