CIBC economist sees risk in lack of Canadian housing data

A lack of comprehensive data on Canada's housing sector poses risks to the country's hot real estate market by restricting information that could help investors make sound decisions, according to a Canadian economist.

Benjamin Tal, a senior economist at CIBC, Canada's fifth-largest bank, called on policymakers to address the issue as rising interest rates are expected to begin to test the market.

Tal pointed to many measures of activity in the mortgage and housing markets that are tracked in the United States but not publicly available in Canada, including credit score distribution across mortgages and homeowners' equity positions.

"The gap between the importance of the real estate market to the economy and the lack of publicly available information on it is mind-boggling," he wrote in a note titled "Flying Blind".

With a new set of policymakers at the helm, including a new finance minister and a Bank of Canada governor named last year, officials "have an opportunity to chart a course that reduces any potential risk of a real estate bubble by making data availability a top priority", Tal said.

Canada's hot housing market has defied expectations of a US-style collapse. While some still warn the market could crash, others expect it will level off, or at worst suffer a correction.