Canada’s largest banks cut mortgage rates last week, and now they might need to reverse the cuts. Half of Canada’s “Big Six” banks cut the interest rate on their 5-year fixed rate mortgages at the end of last week. It might have seemed like a no-brainer back then, but a week is forever ago in […]
Canada plans to increase credit access for the country’s riskiest borrowers in the years to come. A re-elected government may not seem like change, but they promised a big one — larger insured mortgages. High-ratio borrowers will see an increase of up to 25% of their maximum mortgage size. Expansion of credit during a low […]
Canadian home prices are moving faster than wages, leaving a lot of cash-poor, house-rich Boomers. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTPPB) must see opportunity, because they are buying a large reverse mortgage lender. The pension announced its acquisition of HomeEquity bank today. It might not be a familiar name, but their flagship product might […]
The Canadian election is over and the country’s leadership remains largely unchanged. However, a laundry list of election promises mean big changes to real estate are coming. Most of the promised plan seeks to create more demand for housing, which softens price drops. Expect more of the same currently being done, but with a revamped […]
Canadian households devote an astronomical amount of income just to carry their debt payments. Data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows Canadian households have a very high debt service ratio (DSR). The ratio dropped in Q4 2020 slightly, but it’s still much higher than any other G7 country. Not even the US housing […]
Canada’s red hot real estate market continued to cool, according to new numbers from the industry. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data shows the seasonally adjusted sales to new listings ratio (SNLR) fell in August. The relative measure of demand is one of the core indicators used to determine how tight the market is. Since […]
Canadian housing supply plays a role in home price growth, but doesn’t explain all of it. The Bank of Canada (BoC) published a paper on Canadian Housing Supply Elasticities. In it the researchers explain supply plays a big role, but not to the extent we’ve seen. Over the short-term, it fails to explain the extreme […]
Canadians must be hoping for a recession every year, since they’ve never made more money. A National Bank of Canada (NBC) analysis shows household wealth surged in Q2 2021. Their wealth actually surged so fast, the ratio of debt hasn’t looked smaller in almost 2 decades. The bank expects this to fund a significant spending […]
Canadian real estate has long been frothy, but how does it look compared to other countries? According to the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) exuberance index in Q1 2021, pretty bad. Only two G7 countries are considered exuberant markets (a.k.a. bubbles) — Canada and Germany. Those two countries are also the longest-running bubbles of any […]
Either the Canadian real estate bubble is now a bubble on a bubble, or old enough it should be in school. The US Federal Reserve (the Fed) released its quarterly exuberance index for Q1 2021. The index, used to determine country-level housing bubbles, shows Canada is well into one. The unusual circumstances make it unclear […]
