Time for your cheat sheet on this week’s most important stories.
Canadian Real Estate
Canadian Household Credit Slows, As Consumer Credit Growth Plunges Lower Canadian household debt is still rising, but experienced a bit of a hiccup in the latest numbers. The balance of outstanding household debt reached $2.26 trillion in November, up 3.9% from a month before. The 12-month rate of growth made a minor decline, due to falling consumer loan balances. This means all credit growth in the month was due to mortgage debt. Unusual, since consumer credit typically accelerates with mortgage debt. Read More
Canadian Mortgage Debt Growth Accelerates, But Throws A Sign It May Be Losing Steam Canadians have been ramping up mortgage borrowing, but there’s a sign it may slow. The balance of mortgage debt hit $1.62 trillion in November, up 4.6% from last year. The 3-month annualized pace of growth fell to 5.7%, down 3.39% from the month before. This is only one decline, so it’s unclear if it’ll follow with further declines going forward. However, it does show that growth lost a little steam. Read More
Canada Has Never Had This Much Housing Under Construction At The Same Time Canada has never seen this much housing being built all at the same time. There were 274,829 units under construction in Q4 2019, up 7.40% from the same quarter a year before. The current peak is a little over 30% higher than any other previous peak – which happened in 1973. Yes, we need to go back almost 50 years, to find a number even close to today’s building. Read More
Canadian Real Estate Numbers Soar As BC Sales Surge… Kind Of Canadian real estate sales have been showing robust growth over the past few months. There were 26,976 sales in December, up 22.7% from last year. The big climb sounds impressive, but it’s still 0.85% below 2017’s sales. Looking at the distribution of this trend, most of the growth is explained by the slow first half of 2019. There’s growth, just not exactly the shocking amount told by headline numbers. Read More
Toronto Real Estate
Toronto Rental Vacancy Rises To The Highest Level Since 2015, Despite Population Boom Toronto is finally seeing a little relief in its primary rental market, as vacancy rates climb. The average vacancy in the city reached 1.5% in 2019, up 25% from the year before. This is now the highest level since 2015, but still relatively low. However, Toronto has always had a tight primary rental market. The fact that rental rates are showing some of the highest growth in history, isn’t explained by this trend. Read More
Vancouver Real Estate
Vancouver Rental Vacancies Climb To The Highest Level Since 2013 Vancouver’s primary rental market saw vacancies climb to the highest level in years. The average rate reached 1.1% in 2019, up 10% from a year before. This is the highest level since 2013, but highlights how tight the Vancouver rental market has been. Despite the rise in vacancy, rental prices have been rising the most we’ve seen in over a decade. Read More
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TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
