Inflation is transitory… or it may not be. It depends on whether the data is considered reliable enough that day. Bank of Canada (BoC) released a home price exuberance model, showing the market bubbles. Even more interesting is a footnote for the model they used. They feel inflation data on rent is unreliable, because it […]
Low interest rates help to bring working and middle-class prosperity. Inequality will drop if only people could borrow more years of their income today. At least that’s the narrative society was sold on for the past 100 years. It turns out there’s no evidence to show that’s true. In fact, the evidence indicates it was […]
Academics theorize why developers won’t create more purpose-built rental housing. They cite everything from user behavior to policy restrictions. For some reason, they never think to just ask a real estate developer candidly. A few weeks ago I shared a popular Twitter thread on real estate rental development. Not a lot of people realize real […]
Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ve probably noticed something unusual this recession – high unemployment and higher home prices. Odd, right? Usually when people are at risk of losing their jobs and business, their cost of living doesn’t rise. Free markets tend to manage risk this way, choking off credit as economic risk […]
Canadians are increasingly discussing negative interest rates. Since negative interest rate policy is unconventional, there aren’t many examples. Further, there isn’t much discussion from experts that understand the concept. Despite what I’ve heard some real estate agents tell people, it won’t lead to the market boom they assume. In fact, it typically requires a horrible […]
Relax, everything’s fine. Or maybe it’s not. The Bank of Canada (BoC) quietly made plans to buy government backed mortgage bonds, last week. The move is designed to increase the bank’s assets, and arguably assist the housing market. That sounds great, until you realize how these things work. It’s a similar set-up to the one […]
Greater Toronto real estate may not be much more affordable, but it’s a lot easier to find a new home. Altus Group and BILD GTA data show a lot more new home inventory in September. The market is also seeing fewer new home sales, and lower prices for detached home… but higher condo prices. Greater […]
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 […]
Canadian residential real estate mortgage credit is falling to levels we haven’t seen in years, even with easy access to leverage.
Not that you needed a report to tell you this, but Canadian real estate is now at record levels of unaffordability. The RBC Economics Affordability Index approached record highs in Q2 2018. The index, which tracks how expensive it is to buy a home, hasn’t been this high since the 1990 Canadian real estate bubble. […]
