Is Canada’s housing market in a bubble that, like real estate across the globe, is due to burst soon? Not likely, suggests a panel of real estate and financial experts put together by RealtyTimes. There will be some softening in 2012, but no major crash.

TD Economics, for example predicts that sales will record average declines of 2.4 percent in 2012 and 3.5 percent in 2013 and prices will drop an average of 1.9 and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013 respectively. But that’s relatively minor, TD says. Indeed, adds Scotiabank group, the opposite is true: of the 10 developed economies it tracks, average inflation-adjusted home prices for 2011 in Canada were slightly up. Only France and Switzerland showed similar increases.

Scotiabank adds that Canada has had less time to rack up oversized price increases: its economy was still in deep recession into the early to mid-1990s, and so the country’s housing bonanza started later than its southern neighbor, for example. In any case, in 2011, annual price gains were estimated to be up 7.5 per cent and sales up 2.2 per cent over 2010, according to Scotiabank – certainly not the same pattern as we’ve seen across the U.S. and Europe.

Less positive signs come from TD Economics, which says that the average Canadian home price is overvalued by about 10 percent. The IMF adds that high household debt levels, combined with high house prices, could be a source of vulnerability.

On the other hand, there is little speculative activity in the Canadian housing market, says Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. The pace of housing starts is in line with demographic requirements and stocks of completed but unoccupied housing units are below previous peaks, the company says.

One thing to keep in mind is that viewing Canada as a single housing market can be deceptive. Vancouver pulls the entire system out of kilter with its whopping 16 percent price increases in 2011. Still red-hot Toronto also skews the average higher. Smaller cities like Calgary and Edmonton are the most well behaved markets, so to speak, with stable prices in recent years.