Canadians hoping to buy a house in 2020 better brace themselves for limited choice and plenty of competition, the latest housing market data suggests.
While conditions remain ho-hum in the Prairies and Newfoundland and Labrador, in the rest of the country, there are plenty of buyers and not much for sale.
A lack of housing supply would be “the story” for 2020, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) warned in its housing market forecast in mid-December.
The latest national statistics, released by CREA Jan. 15, seemed to confirm the trend. The number of existing homes available for purchases was at a 12-year low in December, the association said.
The issue has been long in the making, according to CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart.
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3:04 Money 123: Renting vs. owning
Money 123: Renting vs. owning
Millennials, for example, now in their late 20s to late 30s, are eager to buy homes, but baby boomers are in no rush to downsize. Young condo owners are also struggling to find larger apartments or townhomes to upsize to. Those who own houses, meanwhile, are increasingly resorting to renovations — finishing basements and adding third floors, for example — in order to add living space instead of looking for a bigger home.
These long-term trends have been weighing on housing supply for years, Cathcart said. And now that buyers’ demand is bouncing back from the lows of 2018, market conditions are once again tightening, he added.
“All of these factors are coming together to make things the way they are to start this year.”
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Nationally, home price growth hit the breaks in 2017 and stagnated throughout 2018 and the first half of 2019, after a series of policy measures blew cold air on the market. In B.C. and Ontario, provincial governments have slapped surtaxes on foreign homebuyers. In Ottawa, the federal government imposed a stress test for both insured and, later, uninsured mortgages. Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada gradually hiked its key interest rate, pushing up borrowing costs.
2:51 Money 123: Understanding rent-to-own
Money 123: Understanding rent-to-own
But in the latter part of 2019, buyers’ demand — and prices — started to heat up again.
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“Now it looks like most buyers in most markets have adjusted to those measures,” said Robert Hogue, senior economist at RBC.
In part, that’s likely because people have had enough time to save for the larger down payment required by Ottawa’s tougher borrowing rules. In part, it may be that some buyers have just resigned themselves to purchasing cheaper homes. In addition, mortgage rates declined through part of 2019, tracking lower long-term borrowing costs in the bond market. That, in turn, lowered the benchmark interest rate used for calculations in the mortgage stress test, bringing some aspiring homebuyers back in the game.
High rates of immigration have also been adding to the ranks of buyers in search of a home, including in places like Halifax and Prince Edward Island, Hogue said.
The tight market, in turn, may be discouraging some sellers, he added. People worry about selling their home without having bought a home to move to, he said. Many want to line up a new property before they put up the “for sale” sign.
“But ifeverybody does that, it means that there’s not that many homes up for sale,” Hogue said.
It’s common for this to happen when housing market activity rebounds after a slow period, he added.
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3:48 First time home buyer mistakes
First time home buyer mistakes
It doesn’t help that, in much of the country, there have been relatively few inaugurations of new condo towers for the past several months.
Even though residential construction remains elevated, it’s easy for large, multi-unit building projects to run into delays, Hogue said.
And while condo units are usually sold pre-construction, once the apartments become available, many of them may be resold or made available for rental, said Thomas Davidoff, professor of real estate finance at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
Luckily, the condo shortage may not last long. In Greater Vancouver, many apartment buildings currently under construction are expected to be completed in the next two years, Davidoff noted.
“A lack of inventory in the condo market in Vancouver — I am not convinced that by the end of this year that will be the story.”
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Hogue offered a similar assessment for both Vancouver and Toronto.
In the Prairies and Newfoundland and Labrador, on the other hand, there are still lots of homes in search of buyers. While employment levels have been recovering from the oil price shock of 2015, incomes aren’t what they used to be for many households, the CREA’s Cathcart said.
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Sellers, on the other hand, are loath to take a big price cut, so the market has been adjusting slowly, he added.
While conditions seem to be stabilizing even there and the warmer season may bring some new momentum to the market, selling a home in those regions remains “tough,” he said.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
