ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
Steve Saretsky
Steve Saretsky is a Vancouver residential Realtor and author behind one of Vancouver’s most popular real estate blogs, Vancity Condo Guide. Steve is widely considered a thought leader in the industry with regular appearances on BNN, CBC, CKNW, CTV and as a contributor to BC Business Magazine. Steve provides advisory services to banks, hedge funds, developers, and various types of investors.
July 7th, 2025 | The Next Shoe to Drop
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Where do we start. This newsletter has been covering several big themes this year. We have long argued that housing starts are in the process of falling off a cliff. Both cities and provinces would start to panic as tax revenues dry up. They’ll be forced to ease development fees and boost […]
June 23rd, 2025 | Fade the Forecasts
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Quite the headline this past week. CMHC gives up on goal to return to 2004 housing affordability levels. In other words, CMHC discovers they’d be insolvent if affordability returned to 2004 levels, abandons goal. Considering CMHC backstops the insurance market in this country, having national home prices (their collateral) decline 71% from […]
June 16th, 2025 | 800 Pound Gorilla
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! A few weeks ago we wrote a piece titled, ‘The Seeds For the Next Crisis’ in which we aptly noted, A new condo development is years (sometimes a decade) in the making. From land acquisition, to rezoning, to development permits, pre-sales, and and building permits. Proformas are written years ago. When input […]
June 9th, 2025 | We Got No Jobs
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! It was a tough week for mortgage shoppers in Canada. The Bank of Canada held rates for the second consecutive meeting. BoC’s Macklem emphasized a wait and see approach, noting, “The Bank’s preferred measures of core inflation as well as other measures of underlying inflation moved up in April. We will be […]
June 2nd, 2025 | The Seeds for the Next Crisis
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Last week we titled a piece called ‘A Firehose of Supply’ in which we duly noted, “The bull thesis for housing this year was falling rates. Sellers have been reluctant to cut prices because rates were supposed to come down and house prices were supposed to go up. Instead, mortgage rates only […]
May 26th, 2025 | A Firehose of Supply
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Last week we learned Canada’s new housing minister didn’t feel it was appropriate for home prices to fall. Instead, suggesting “We’ve got to create some incentives and opportunities for people to get into the market, we got to make sure that peoples assets are obviously protected, and that’s the market housing. But […]
May 19th, 2025 | Saving Housing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Canada has a new housing minister. Gregor Robertson, former mayor of Vancouver, has been anointed by Prime Minister Carney with the hopeless task of fixing Canada’s housing crisis. It’s already off to a rough start. When asked by a reporter if home prices need to go down, he had a freudian slip. […]
May 5th, 2025 | Affordability Cometh
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Mark Carney is in. The Liberal government was granted a fourth term in power and will have their work cut out for them as the economy circles the drain. Housing, in particular, is in a rather precarious spot. As we’ve highlighted at length in this newsletter, housing starts are crumbling. Source: RBC […]
April 28th, 2025 | Election Day
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Today is the day, Canadians across the country will head to the voting booths and decide the direction of the country for the next four years. Polls suggest another liberal government, but polls are often wrong. This will be a tight race, so get out and vote. Cost of living and housing […]
April 14th, 2025 | Bonds!
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! It’s a big week for mortgage shoppers. Fixed rates are on the move higher after unprecedented volatility in the bond market. Bond volatility as measured by the MOVE index touched as high as 172 intraday, levels only seen during times of turmoil (Oct 1998 LTCM collapse, Sep 2008 Lehman collapse, Mar 2023 […]
April 7th, 2025 | The Next Lost Decade
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! As we reported a few weeks ago, consumer confidence in Canada has plunged to twenty year lows amidst growing job losses and a global tariff war. The lack of confidence is showing up in home sales, which have fallen off a cliff in recent months. Recent data for the month of March […]
March 31st, 2025 | The Human QE Hangover
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! As we learned last week, Canada’s population surge has come to an end. Population growth rose by just 0.15% last quarter, which outside of the 2020 lockdowns was the slowest quarter for population growth since 2017. For the first time in three years, the non-permanent resident cohort outright contracted. More importantly, if […]
March 24th, 2025 | Heading to the Polls
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! It’s official, Canadians are heading to the polls on April 28th. Interim PM, Mark Carney has triggered an election, in what will surely be one of the most consequential elections in recent history. The country is caught between a rock and a hard place, fighting multiple battles on different fronts. Not only […]
March 17th, 2025 | Gone Missing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Canada has a new Prime Minister. Mark Carney was installed as leader of the country this past week. How long he lasts is anyone’s guess, but if he does eventually survive a federal election he will have some difficult decisions. One of which is housing. Real Estate sales are circling the drain, […]
March 10th, 2025 | Timing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Just last week we highlighted the growing desperation in the new construction market where pre-sales are struggling, and unsold inventory is piling up across the country. This is particularly true in Canada’s two largest major metros of Toronto and Vancouver. In 2024, Toronto pre-sales hit 30 year lows. A stunningly bad figure […]
March 3rd, 2025 | Limping Across the Finish Line
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! The Canadian economy expanded at a stronger-than-expected 2.6% annualized pace in the fourth quarter, far exceeding the Bank of Canada’s estimate of 1.8% and the 1.7% median estimate from economists in a Bloomberg survey. However, under the hood, the details left more to be desired. According to Statistics Canada, GDP per capita […]
February 24th, 2025 | Shelter Inflation
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! A recent reprieve on tariffs, combined with slightly hotter than expected jobs and inflation data have slowed the odds of a rate cut from the Bank of Canada in March. The two core inflation measures — so-called trim and median — both jumped to 2.7% in January. These metrics have been stuck […]
February 10th, 2025 | The Discretionary Bid
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! And just like that, tariffs are off. At least for the next 30 days, or so we are told. In other words, the direction of the Canadian economy really depends on what side of the bed President Trump wakes up on. Remember, just last week we were facing 25% tariffs across the […]
February 3rd, 2025 | Tariffs & Housing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! We are now in the midst of a full blown tariff war. There’s plenty of smart economic commentary out there, so let’s get into it. According to BMO’s chief economist, Doug Porter, “Trump’s tariff hammer will come down hard on Canada’s economy. If the announced tariffs remain in place for one year, […]
January 27th, 2025 | Poorer Than You Think
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! A good reminder from the economics team at National Bank highlights the sobering proposition that a Canadian household would need an annual income of approximately $186,963 to afford a mortgage on a median-priced home in this country, at which point the government thinks you’re rich and taxes you into oblivion. In places […]
January 20th, 2025 | The Cash Cow
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Highlighting a good piece from the BMO economics team this past week. Per BMO, The Canadian housing market should firm modestly this year, but it’s still a long way back to the 2022 highs. Activity and prices have recently improved alongside Bank of Canada rate cuts, and that moderate upward momentum should […]
January 13th, 2025 | Big Bank, Big Forecasts
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Every New Year is marked with forecasts. There’s a natural affinity for making predictions about house prices, particularly in Canada. Most homeowners we chat with today believe two things, interest rates are going lower and house prices should rise in 2025. I have a few thoughts, but first let’s see what the […]
January 6th, 2025 | Results May Vary
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Welcome to a New Year. The Real Estate industry remains optimistic that 2025 will finally mark the end of the housing bear market, after what’s been a grueling few years. Are we really turning the corner, or is there more pain to come? Let’s do a deep dive on the Vancouver housing […]
December 23rd, 2024 | To the Housing Minister
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! Chaos in Ottawa. Not a whole lot more to add on the subject that you haven’t already read. Freeland is out, the budget exceeded its fiscal guardrails by more than 50%, and we are likely heading for an early election in the New Year. Until then, the Trudeau government has shuffled the […]
December 16th, 2024 | Whispers of the Bond Market
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! Homeowners, rejoice! As expected, The Bank of Canada followed through with another jumbo rate cut, slashing the overnight rate by another 50bps, and signalled more to come, albeit at a slower pace. “It has been a tumultuous four-and-a-half years for Canadians, for the Canadian economy. I’m very pleased we’ve got inflation back […]