ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
April 14, 2025 | Bonds!
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 7, 2025 | The Next Lost Decade
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 31, 2025 | The Human QE Hangover
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 24, 2025 | Heading to the Polls
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 17, 2025 | Gone Missing
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 10, 2025 | Timing
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 3, 2025 | Limping Across the Finish Line
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 24, 2025 | Shelter Inflation
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 10, 2025 | The Discretionary Bid
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 3, 2025 | Tariffs & Housing
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 27, 2025 | Poorer Than You Think
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 20, 2025 | The Cash Cow
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 13, 2025 | Big Bank, Big Forecasts
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 6, 2025 | Results May Vary
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 23, 2024 | To the Housing Minister
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 16, 2024 | Whispers of the Bond Market
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 […]
December 9, 2024 | Housing Vibes
Happy Monday Morning! We’re in a recession, I wouldn’t even call it a technical one. Those were the words from former Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz this past week. It appears Poloz also agrees with our view, that despite the finance ministers best attempt at quieting the animal spirts, this is not a vibecession, but […]
December 2, 2024 | The Rental Boom
Happy Monday morning! We’ve been talking a lot about the weakness in the rental market. Rents are declining in some of Canada’s largest major metros. In Toronto and Vancouver asking rents have dipped close to 10% over the past year. Part of this is from a massive boom in rental housing development. Per RBC, we […]
November 25, 2024 | Capital Preservation
Happy Monday Morning! Last week we penciled a newsletter titled Wildly Offside, in which we highlighted new research from the Parliamentary Budget officer. As we had noted below, The PBO had previously reported that Canada needs to build another 1.3 million homes by 2030 to close the housing gap — and today it says the revised […]
November 18, 2024 | Wildly Offside
Happy Monday Morning! After completely botching a world class immigration system, the Trudeau government has been forced to reverse course, promising to hit the brakes and slow population growth to zero over the next two years. However, as we know, the damage is already done and it will take more than a decade to fix […]
November 4, 2024 | Pigs at the Trough
Happy Monday Morning! We do our best to steer clear of politics in this newsletter. However, housing is political. Housing is impacted by all levels of government, from the federal government at the top, the provincial government in the middle, and all the way down to your municipal council member. Our housing crisis is largely […]
October 28, 2024 | Heading to Zero
Happy Monday Morning! As expected, Macklem and Co slashed rates by 50bps this past week, citing slower growth and a softening labour market. Further adding, “if the economy evolves broadly in line with our latest forecast, we expect to reduce the policy rate further.” Remember that line, we’ll come back to it. So the Bank […]
October 21, 2024 | Jumbo Cuts
Happy Monday Morning! Some good news on the inflation front. Headline CPI cooled to 1.6% in September, slower than the median estimate of 1.8% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. For the first time since February 2021 inflation is now below the central bank’s 2% target and has been within its target range for nine […]
October 7, 2024 | Cheaper Mortgages?
Happy Monday Morning! I just got back from presenting at the annual Veritas Real Estate conference in Toronto. The conference, which caters towards investment professionals and financial institutions engaged in a healthy debate on the direction of our housing market. There was a lengthy discussion on interest rates, which is undoubtedly one of, if not the largest […]
September 30, 2024 | Free Markets
Happy Monday Morning! This newsletter isn’t all bad news. We finally got some good policy out of Ottawa this past week. OSFI, the banking regulator, announced it will finally remove the stress test for homeowners who wish to switch lenders at mortgage renewal time. Under previous guidelines, when the mortgage term ended and a borrower […]