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 […]
Young Canadians aren’t interested in joining the trades, and it’s a big problem. RBC Economics took a look at skilled workers, and the anticipated shortage. The labor shortage isn’t just due to a large demographic cliff though. Not enough young adults are attracted to the field, nor are new immigrants. This squeeze can result in […]
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 building investment is falling, and it’s due to a lack of housing investment. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data shows total building investment fell in July. Taking a dive into the data, we can see this is due entirely to falling residential investment. While it dropped, no need to worry about an inventory squeeze. The […]
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 […]
Canadian household indicators are showing their debt problems are rapidly resurfacing. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data shows the ratio of household debt to disposable income surged in Q2 2021. This measure indicates debt is growing faster than the rate of income. Debt as a ratio of income has actually never seen such fast annual growth […]
Canadian debt is dirt cheap, but it won’t be this cheap forever, warns BMO. Douglas Porter, the bank’s chief economist, expects the cost of borrowing to remain “low for long.” He just doesn’t see it being quite as low as the current stimulus driven environment. As governments taper stimulus to fund its spending, borrowing rates […]
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 […]
Canada’s largest bank might be your landlord in the not-so-distant future… if they aren’t already, at this point. The RBC Global Asset Management (GAM) Canadian Core Real Estate Fund entered into an agreement to buy half of a real estate portfolio from Quadreal this week. The deal comes as more investors are crowded out of […]
Canadian politicians promise to “fix” housing affordability if elected this year. Just one problem — all of their plans will increase home prices, not make them more affordable. That’s the take from Finder‘s 15-person monetary policy panel. The Fintech regularly polls Canada’s top economists for their take on monetary policy. This time they asked for […]
