The latest composite price index numbers are open to interpretation

Housing prices in Hamilton are cooling off. And heating up.

And the glass is half empty and half full, and no matter where you go there you are.

The latest Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, that describes price changes in single-family homes in 11 Canadian cities, was released Wednesday.

How you interpret the numbers depends on how you look at them.

To view the report’s raw data for November’s housing prices, go to www.housepriceindex.ca

Or you can consult this helpful summary and use the time saved to Christmas shop.

Hamilton’s housing prices, which generally mirror national trends, are: Cooling off Hamilton’s housing price index dropped 1.6 per cent from October 2017 to November 2017.

(The housing price index is based on resale prices of individual single-family houses in selected metropolitan areas) Warming up Prices increased 12 per cent in November compared to November 2016 — the third highest increase in the report’s composite list of cities, just behind Victoria and Vancouver. Cooling rapidly Sure, November’s prices increased over November 2016 12 per cent, but November 2016 had increased 16 per cent from November 2015. Super cold Hamilton experienced a 23 per cent increase in housing prices last May over May of 2016; increases as a percentage year over year/ month by month have been in decline in the waning months of 2017 – down, in fact, for three straight months (Toronto, by comparison, has been in decline four straight months).

The report says November’s decline in prices nationally was “the largest for a month of November outside of a recession.” Warming up, in the big picture In the old days, in 2013, Hamilton’s year-over-year increase in housing prices in November was just 5 per cent. Super hot, in the big picture Before the dawn of time, in November 1999, Hamilton’s housing price index was just 69.45 — the index has jumped 69 per cent (to 225.28) since then.

Whether current trends are positive or negative depends on if you are buying or selling — realtors talk about the positives of “rebalancing” a hot housing market.

In that vein, the report describes Vancouver’s cooling November market in warm terms — after six consecutive months of all-time highs, it has “stabilized.”