What is it? What can it do for me? How does it work?
What is it?
MLS® HPI allows you to see trends in home prices for a specific type of house in a given neighbourhood, that takes into account a home’s quantitative attributes (e.g. the number of rooms it has; square footage etc.) and qualitative attributes (e.g., whether it has a finished basement, a view etc.).
Combined with our Real Estate knowledge, experience, and skills, the MLS® HPI will allow you better understand these trends - and how they can affect the market value of your home.
Most importantly, it will help you approach one of life's most important decisions - buying or selling a home - with greater confidence.
What can it do for me?
MLS® HPI isn't designed to predict the value of an individual property. However, since it is based on MLS® listing content - a comprehensive and accurate source of real estate data in Canada - the MLS® HPI provides a more precise picture of home price trends in a given region, municipality, or neighbourhood.
It can help you by:
- Putting accurate information in the hands of your Realtor, who can use it to help you get the right price, whether you're buying OR selling
- Helping you see price trends, so you can plan ahead
- Allowing you to compare home prices across the entire country if you're moving from one region to another
How does it work?
The MLS® HPI can help you gauge changes in housing prices over time, including changes in:
- Overall home prices for the market as a whole
- Prices for specific housing categories in a given area
- or for the overall market
Easy to calculate
The MLS® HPI tracks changes in home prices by comparing price levels at a point in time with price levels in a base (reference) period. The base period value is always 100.
For example, if the base period for single-family homes is 2005, and the MLS® HPI value for single-family homes in December 2011 is 149.1, you know that the value of single-family homes is up 49.1%, compared with 2005 (149.1 − 100 = 49.1%).
