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.
October 15th, 2021 | Vancouver Real Estate, Inflation, Mortgage Rates
HoweStreet.com Radio - Bitcoin heating North Vancouver
October 11th, 2021 | Taper Time
Steve Saretsky Blog - The Canadian economy added 157,000 jobs in September, finally recouping all of the jobs lost during the height of the pandemic. However, wage inflation remains tepid, growing just 1.7% from last year, despite overall CPI inflation running at 4.1%, an eighteen year high. In other words, wage inflation is not keeping pace with the rising […]
October 8th, 2021 | The Saretsky Report – September 2021
The Saretsky Report - Despite the uncertainties of a federal election the housing market continued to hum along in September. Home sales dipped 13% when compared to last September, but that should not come as a surprise considering last September marked an all-time record high for the month. Year-overyear base effects will be hard to top in the months […]
October 5th, 2021 | BC, Bring Cash
Steve Saretsky Blog - We’ve talked a lot about the great reshuffling here. The pandemic changed a lot of things, including where people want to live, and how they want to live. The lust for bigger spaces for less money has driven an exodus away from the city. Recent data from Stats Canada shows Canadians are on the move. Interprovincial […]
October 2nd, 2021 | Same, But Different?
Steve Saretsky Blog - It took over $600 million of tax pay dollars to reach the same outcome, another liberal minority government. I can think of a few better places to spend $600 million, affordable housing supply being one of them. Nonetheless, what’s done is done, and we now have some clarity on the direction of government and how […]
September 20th, 2021 | Election Day
Steve Saretsky Blog - CPI inflation ripped, hitting 4.1% in August. Inflation in Canada is now accelerating at its fastest pace since 2003. The homeowners’ replacement cost index, which is related to the price of new homes, continued to trend upward, rising 14.3% year over year in August—the largest yearly increase since September 1987. Meanwhile, borrowing costs continue to fall. […]
September 17th, 2021 | Housing Crisis, FOMO, Mortgage Rates, China
HoweStreet.com Radio - Foreign Home Buyers, Immigration
September 15th, 2021 | The Saretsky Report August 2021
The Saretsky Report - Suffice to say, the housing market remains front and center of most discussions. After surging to unprecedented levels during the height of the pandemic, it has taken a much needed breather this summer. However, this story is far from over.
September 14th, 2021 | Certificates of Confiscation
Steve Saretsky Blog - The Bank of Canada provided guidance for how it plans to eventually remove stimulus, saying it will first raise interest rates before curbing its holdings of government bonds. The Bank has been using two major policies for suppressing interest rates, first by leaving its overnight policy rate near zero, and secondly by purchasing hundreds of […]
September 10th, 2021 | The Cost of Living Crisis
Steve Saretsky Blog - Statistics Canada has revised the latest reading on GDP, highlighting a contraction of 1.1% at an annualized rate in the second quarter, well below the 2.5% expansion forecasted in a Bloomberg survey of economists. It’s a big miss, and one that does not bode well for the Trudeau Government as we head to the polls […]
August 30th, 2021 | Foreign Buyer Be Gone
Steve Saretsky Blog - I don’t have any strong political views, I genuinely believe politicians are just pawns in a bigger system that is deeply entrenched in society today. In other words, full of promises but not a whole lot changes regardless of who gets in power. I do, however, have a few observations about these elections that i’d […]
August 24th, 2021 | Free Money For All Renters
Steve Saretsky Blog - Election campaigns are in full swing, and at the centre of the political debate is the cost of living. CPI inflation just ticked in at 3.7% in July, one of the highest readings over the past two decades. Furthermore, housing inflation is out control, with national home prices accelerating at their fastest pace on record, […]
August 23rd, 2021 | The Saretsky Report – July 2021
The Saretsky Report - As discussed in last months report, the great reopening trade is in full swing. People have exited their homes and real estate has become less of a priority. We can see this in the housing data which continues to recede each month since the FOMO induced top in March. Sales here in Greater Vancouver have […]
August 22nd, 2021 | Build Back Better
Steve Saretsky Blog - Here we go, the highly anticipated federal election this fall is now confirmed. The Trudeau government will seek to win a majority government in what is undoubtedly a power grab at a pivotal time in history. “Canadians need to choose how to finish the fight against COVID-19 and build back better. From getting the job done […]
August 9th, 2021 | Real Estate Hoarding
Steve Saretsky Blog - The great reopening trade is in full swing. People have exited their homes and real estate has become less of a priority. We can see this in the housing data which continues to recede each month since the FOMO induced top in March. Sales here in Greater Vancouver have now dropped for four consecutive months […]
August 6th, 2021 | Vancouver Sales and Inventory, Mortgage Rates
HoweStreet.com Radio - Foreign Buyers and Sellers, FOMO
August 2nd, 2021 | Control the Narrative
Steve Saretsky Blog - The Canadian government announced it has extended its pandemic recovery benefits (also known as helicopter money) until October 23, 2021. It’s getting hard to track all these programs, not to mention how many times they have now been extended. The following money drops are ongoing: 1. The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) 2. The Canada Emergency Wage […]
July 30th, 2021 | Your Economic Textbook Will Do you No Good
Steve Saretsky Blog - According to a report this past week from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the pandemic recession only lasted two months, from February 2020 to April 2020. This makes it the shortest recession in the history of the United States. The Bureau defines a recession usually as “a decline in economic activity that lasts more […]
July 21st, 2021 | The Saretsky Report – June 2021
The Saretsky Report - The Great reopening is upon us. Similar to the stock market, you have the pandemic trade, which resulted in people wanting bigger homes away from the city, and now I think we are entering the reopening trade. Take the US, for example, which is arguably a month or two ahead of us. Most of the […]
July 20th, 2021 | Vote Buying Season?
Steve Saretsky Blog - I’ve talked a lot about the great reopening trade. People are getting vaccinated, the weather is great, and people are desperate to get out of their house after tiresome lockdowns. In fact, Canada has now fully vaccinated 48.8% of its population against Covid-19, overtaking the U.S. for the first time. It’s no surprise that housing […]
July 18th, 2021 | The Last Housing Bear Capitulates
Steve Saretsky Blog - Per the most recent data from the Canadian Bankers Association, nearly 17% of all mortgages in Canada received a mortgage deferral at one point or another during the pandemic. At the end of February, 98% of those deferrals expired. Home prices during this time are up 24% nationally. Who saw that coming? Certainly not our […]
July 9th, 2021 | Vancouver Home Sales, Prices, and Cycles
HoweStreet.com Radio - Interest Rates, Tapering, Lending
July 6th, 2021 | The Reopening Trade
Steve Saretsky Blog - The pandemic induced housing boom has been well documented so I won’t go into great detail here. In hindsight it was easy to see, people got locked in their homes, they suddenly needed more space, some people decided to move further away from the office as the prospects of work from home appeared more permanent. […]
June 30th, 2021 | Transitory Inflation
Steve Saretsky Blog - There’s a lot of bets these days on higher inflation and higher interest rates. After being plagued for over a decade with a zero interest rate policy, a new combination of government spending and central bank QE purchases are poised to send inflation higher. So far that’s been the winning trade, with CPI inflation printing […]
June 21st, 2021 | Housing Bubbles
Steve Saretsky Blog - Canadian house prices have been flagged as over valued, unstable, and a risk to the financial system for a long time. These concerns have been noted by institutions such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) since at least 2012, and have been cited as a major concern by our very own central bank since about […]