Toronto freefalls from the top to near-bottom in global rankings

Toronto has seen a dramatic fall from the top in a global ranking of the best performing residential housing markets.

Frank Knight’s Global Residential Cities Index for Q2 2018 has seen the city slump from number 1 in Q2 2017 to 137 a year later.

That’s because prices have risen in most of the 150 cities included, with only the bottom 27 posting declines. Toronto prices were down 2.8%, the same as Moscow but better than cities including Sydney, Stockholm, and Dubai.

Meanwhile, Vancouver is at number 10 overall compared to 52 a year earlier, with a 13.3% rise in home prices year-over-year.

That puts the BC city in the same elite group as Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Budapest. The ranking is topped by Ahmedabad, India which posted a 19.4% annual price rise.

Vancouver also takes the top spot for North America where the average annual price gain was 5%. The city coming closest to Vancouver’s gains was Seattle in 11th place with a 12.8% price gain. Then comes San Francisco in 18th place with a 10.7% gain.

Among other Canadian cities in the top 150, Ottawa-Gatineau takes 62nd place with a 4.7% price gain year-over-year; Montreal is 80th with 3.6%; Halifax is 85th with 3.2%.