Canadian house prices still rising, but at slowest annual pace since January 2015

The average price of a Canadian home increased by 5 per cent to $456,722 in August.

That's the smallest annual gain since January 2015, the Canadian Real Estate Association said in a release Thursday.

Hot housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver continue to skew the national average higher, but a recent cool-down in Vancouver specifically mean that city is having less of an impact that usual in the national figure, CREA said.

In July, the city slapped a 15 per cent surtax on foreign buyers, and there's anecdotal evidence that that move is already having a major impact on demand, and prices.

"Single family homes sales were already cooling before the new land transfer tax on foreign home buyers in Metro Vancouver came into effect," CREA's chief economist GregoryKlump said. "The surprise announcement of the new tax caused sales to brake hard."

If Toronto and Vancouver are stripped out of the figures, the average Canadian home was worth$357,033 in August.

As Bank of Montreal economist Robert Kavcic put it, "The big story behind the national figures (which you can go ahead and call irrelevant) [is that] Vancouver has gone cold, while Toronto is heating up to a rolling boil."