Canadian real estate sales cooled last year – by a lot. Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) numbers show 2018’s sales were the slowest in years. In fact, Canadian home sales made one of the largest declines in a decade. Despite the fact that your Realtor may have shifted to “there’s no national market” mode, there’s […]
Toronto is expecting a lot more real estate supply, and that’s going to be a drag on rental price growth. Urbanation, a leading research firm for developers, is forecasting a big drop in the rate of growth for apartment rental rates in 2019. The firm expects the rise in new apartments to trim growth in […]
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house – not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Well, except for Evan Siddall… fine, it was the afternoon and he was on Twitter. On Christmas Eve, the CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) defended mortgage stress testing. The head of […]
Canadian households just demonstrated debt is more complicated than bank economists think. Statistics Canada numbers, adjusted by former Maclean’s business editor Jason Kirby, show Canada’s debt to income ratio made a huge jump in Q3 2018. Canadian debt to income levels are now back above the US pre-Great Recession peak. That level, which is notoriously […]
Break out the champagne for the next open house, because it’s all clear sailing from here. That’s according to the CEO of one of Canada’s largest real estate developers, who declared Canadian real estate achieved a soft landing. The situation is not unlike the US being declared a soft landing in 2006, but just like […]
Canadian mortgage credit growth is falling, but how bad is it in real terms? People are comparing today’s low growth numbers to the mid-1990s. While there are some parallels, it more accurately resembles the early 1980s. Mortgage credit growth, when adjusted for inflation, is heading towards negative numbers. We haven’t actually experienced negative real growth […]
After years of doing mostly nothing, Canadian regulators are springing into action. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), after successfully rolling out B-20 Guidelines, are turning their focus to equity lending. Mortgages issued this way allow lenders to gloss over income, and rely mostly on equity in the home. 1 in 5 […]
There’s a lot of factors that impact real estate prices, but they all ultimately depend on liquidity. Liquidity is just a way of saying there needs to be people that want to buy your home, and have enough money to buy it. The money used to come from income and savings, but in the late […]
The Toronto real estate sold data drama continues, after less than a month of being published. Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) notified members that there have been reports of false sold data being submitted to the MLS. Agents looking to “protect” consumer privacy have submitted false sold information, to obfuscate how much was really paid […]
No, we won’t call Toronto real estate a bubble today. Usually we shy away from using the B-word entirely. Canadians tend to look at you like you’ve insulted their mother when you say it. Instead we’re going to discuss the phases of a real estate bubble, and let you make a decision for yourself. Understanding […]
