The useful answer is no. Lawrence L. Schembri’s August 25, 2015 remarks do not show that every economy placed beside Canada avoided a lasting post-crisis drop in real house prices. In Kingston, he said Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden did not have sizable post-crisis corrections in house prices. A second set of advanced economies did have significant and persistent declines. The fetched text never names that second set. It also says the five-country group experienced house-price corrections during the global financial crisis, and that those corrections caused house-price-to-income ratios to fall temporarily before the ratios climbed again.
Two charts, not a complete ranking
Chart 1 shows indexes of real house prices since 1975 for two sets of advanced economies. Real means inflation-adjusted, not a sticker price or a mortgage payment. Chart 1a covers Canada and four small, open economies—Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden—with similar macroeconomic policy frameworks and similar experiences during and after the global financial crisis. He specifies that they did not have sizable post-crisis corrections in house prices.
Chart 1b is the comparison set: advanced economies that experienced significant and persistent post-crisis declines. Footnotes label both groups, but the fetched page does not include the footnote text, so the second set cannot be identified here.
Schembri states three chart points. Paths varied; some movement was common, but local circumstances clearly mattered. Broadly, real house prices in both sets had no material upward trend from 1975 to 1995. A generalized rise began in the second half of the 1990s and, on the day of the speech, was continuing even after post-crisis corrections. Real prices remained well above 1995 levels for almost all countries.
A correction happened; one ratio’s dip was called temporary
“Not sizable” is the peer-group claim in that real-price discussion. Later, on Canada and the comparable countries, Schembri says they also experienced house-price corrections during the global financial crisis. Those corrections caused ratios of house prices to income to decline temporarily, after which the ratios continued climbing. Since 1995, house prices in this set had increased faster than nominal personal disposable income, alongside solid income growth that was strongest in Norway and Sweden.
The peers were not described as untouched. What was called temporary was the ratio’s decline. The speech does not print the size of any real-price drop, the date of a trough, or whether each peer index had regained its pre-crisis peak by August 2015. Chart 1 is a real-price index. The ratio compares house prices with nominal personal disposable income, and it can fall because prices fall, income rises, or both. The text does not separate those parts. The other group’s declines are called both significant and persistent, without a numeric cutoff for either word.
These next figures are a hypothetical, not a chart reading. Assume an index is 100 in 1995 and 160 before a crisis. A fall from 160 to 150 is 10 points; a fall from 160 to 110 is 50. Both 150 and 110 remain above 100, so “well above 1995” can describe either a short dip or a much deeper decline. The assumed levels do not come from the speech.
National owner-occupied prices leave local gaps
A house, Schembri says, is both a consumption good and an asset. It provides housing services and stores wealth, and for most people it is the largest asset they own. Buying depends on those services, the price, and user cost: depreciation, maintenance, and interest, minus expected price growth. Market price depends on demand for housing services and the stock of houses, with expected appreciation feeding back into user cost. The fetch does not show that this loop caused the unnamed group’s persistent declines.
The measure is primarily owner-occupied housing, singles and multiples together, and a composite price of existing houses at the national level. It is not a rent series, a new-house-only series, or a city index. A national average can hide a steep local drop, which fits his point that local circumstances clearly matter. The introduction’s $15,000 line only sets the scene for Kingston meetings since 1961. It is not a statistic in the comparison.
The shared rise does not explain the split
Schembri reads the post-1995 climb as evidence of common factors, global or simultaneous, over the 20 years before the speech. He says four demand sets likely contributed to rising real prices across advanced economies since 1995: incomes and lower long-term interest rates; population growth, including migration, and age structure and family size; broader and more efficient mortgage credit; and other influences, including the policy framework, international investment, preferences, and tax and regulatory changes. Those are reasons offered for the shared rise, not a test of why one group’s post-crisis decline persisted. The page stops mid-sentence at “In Canada, it is noteworthy.” Supply, financial stability, and macroprudential policy are announced in the introduction and are outside this fetch.
What to watch is still inside the 2015 record
Households and firms comparing post-crisis headlines can use a limited classification. As of August 25, 2015, five named economies were grouped by the lack of a sizable post-crisis house-price correction, even though corrections and a temporary price-to-income dip were also recorded. A second advanced-economy group was defined by significant and persistent declines, without names in the fetched text. Real prices were still described as well above 1995 levels for almost all countries in both sets, and the post-1995 rise was described as still underway that day.
“Today” in the speech means August 25, 2015, not November 5, 2026, when the truncated page was checked. Nothing here is a current asking price, rent, or mortgage reset. The evidence that would tighten the group split is the missing Chart 1b footnote, the unprinted index levels, and any explicit size or duration behind “sizable” and “persistent.” Until those are visible, the remarks support Schembri’s split, not a flat path for every peer and not a named list of lasting declines.