Nobody knows what a home will be worth in ten years. The plan still needs a number, because the home's value sets what a sale brings in, what property tax costs, and how much a home equity line can borrow.
The rule
The default assumption is 3.5% a year, nominal.[1] It is built from PWL Capital's expectations for a personal residence: a 1% a year return above inflation, plus its 2.5% inflation expectation[2] (see inflation and today's dollars). PWL states the residence return in real terms; the two are added, not compounded, which gives 3.5% rather than 3.525%.
Until 26 September 2026 the default was 2%, the Bank of Canada's inflation target, which means no real growth.
The figure is for the typical home over decades. A single home is far more variable: PWL puts the yearly volatility of an individual Canadian home at 14.7%, of which 4.2 points come from the market and 10.5 from the particular property.[3]
Prices can fall
One steady rate is a simplification. Real home prices move unevenly and can fall for years at a time. A PWL Capital study of apartments in twelve Canadian cities from 2005 to 2024 found prices in Calgary fell on average over the five years 2015 to 2019, and prices in Toronto and Hamilton declined after 2022. Over the whole period, a renter who invested the difference ended with more than an owner in seven of the twelve cities, and the two came out about even on average.[4] The study also notes that owning means putting a large share of your money into one home, whose price can swing as much as a stock's. On the house page, the "If the home grows less or more" table shows how much your own answer depends on the rate.
A new home's starting price
A home added to a plan starts at $600,000 until you enter its price.[5] It is a round figure a little under the national average resale price that CREA reported for September 2026, $666,538. It is a place to start, not a price for your city: the first page you see after adding a home asks for the real one. The down payment starts at 20% of the price, the least that needs no mortgage insurance,[6] so the first mortgage the plan shows carries no premium. A figure left at its starting value is listed among what the plan assumes about the home.
What the engine does
- Starts a home at its purchase price and grows it at the rate set for that home, compounding smoothly through the year.
- Uses that value for a sale, for property tax, which grows with the home's value (see what a house costs to hold), and as the limit on borrowing against the home in a short plan.
- Lets the rate be changed for each home.
- In the Simulation view, draws a different growth rate for each year around the assumption, using the volatility above, with each home drawn independently of the markets. See Monte Carlo.
What it deliberately does not
- Treat the figure as a forecast or an appraisal. It is labelled as an assumption wherever it is used.
- Differ by city, neighbourhood or type of home.
- Follow a market cycle. Outside the Simulation view, value grows at a steady rate.
- Link home values to the investment markets; no correlation is available to use.
- Tie rent to home prices. Rent has its own growth rate; see rent.