Is the market cooling off? 

CREA (Canadian Real Estate Association) says January figures show the pace slowing down - sales across the country fell 2.89% in the first month of the year. But prices were still up nationally ...because of the poor price numbers in 2008. 

As I've pointed out here before, the pricing numbers we've seen in headlines recently compared growth rates between 2009 and poor numbers in 2008. So the result looks artificially high because we were looking at a good month (i.e Sep-Dec 2009) to negative growth numbers (Sep-Dec 2008). But now that we are in 2010 and comparing to better numbers from last year, the year over year growth rate will begin to look more reasonable. 

The best way to view appreciation is to look at short and longer term trends. The overall increase in prices for all of 2009 was 4.2% in the GTA - almost right on the mark for the long term rate of 4%.