The latest data from the Canadian Real Estate Association is now showing about half of the countries markets with rising and half with dropping prices.

Toronto and Vancouver are doing well so far with a year over year increase of 4.9% and 1.8% .

The big winner? That would be St. Catharines with a YOY increase of 16.1%.

The overall average house price grew 3.1 per cent in the year to January, to $401,143. That’s the smallest increase since April, 2013, but it’s largely a story of two still-hot housing markets: Toronto and Vancouver. Strip out those two cities and average house prices are down 0.3 per cent over the past year.

Home sales, meanwhile, are 2 per cent lower than they were a year ago, CREA numbers showed.

Major energy industry centres like Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina saw some of the sharpest declines in housing demand, TD economist Diana Petramala noted.

There is “a widening regional wedge” in Canada’s housing markets, Petramala wrote in a client note, as oil-importing cities’ housing markets benefit from lower oil prices while producer cities struggle.

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