Blog

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Swimming Naked

Happy Monday Morning! Those holding their breath for an easing in mortgage rates were delivered some tough news last week. The Canadian labour market added 150,000 jobs in January, more than TEN times economist estimates. Let’s not forget that December jobs numbers were TWENTY times estimates. Just what the hell

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No Bull, Caution Ahead

Happy Monday Morning! Lots of chatter these days about increased activity in the housing market. It’s true open houses are busier, stale inventory that’s been sitting for months is suddenly under contract, and some new listings are fetching multiple offers. Quite a difference four weeks can make. Is this the

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Finding a Bid

Happy Monday Morning! As expected, one and done from the BoC this past week. Here’s Tiff Macklem, “With today’s modest increase, we expect to pause rate hikes while we assess the impacts. To be clear, this is a conditional pause. Its conditional on economic developments evolving broadly inline with our

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A Healthy Cleansing

Happy Monday Morning! We got more encouraging news on the inflation front. Consumer prices in Canada fell on a seasonally adjusted basis, dropping -0.1% month over month, the first drop since July 2020. Yes, annual inflation still looks very high at 6.3%, but that only tells us what happened a

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Big, Fat, Laggy Indexes.

Happy Monday Morning! Canadian inflation data drops this week on Wednesday, January 17th. This will be an important headline given that the Bank of Canada is set to meet the following week on January 25th. As of right now the market is still expecting a 25bps rate hike, but that

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Brace for a Year of Volatility Ahead

Happy Monday Morning! Back to our regularly scheduled programming after a few weeks off during the holidays. Last year was an eventful year across the Canadian Real Estate spectrum to say the least. I figured i’d start off the New Year with a quick sentiment check. And the survey says…

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Better Balance

Bank of Canada Governor, Tiff Macklem, delivered some final comments this week at a keynote speech in BC. He didn’t mince words following the fastest rate hiking cycle in recent history. “There’s no question that if you bought a house near the peak, you took a variable rate mortgage with

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A Pause, But Not a Pivot

To no surprise, the Bank of Canada raised rates again this past week. Another 50bps. Interest rates are now up a whopping 400bps since this tightening cycle began in March. According to Macquarie Research, this is the sharpest calendar year of rate hikes on record going back to 1936. The

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Collateral Damage

Lots to unpack this week so let’s dive in. Sales figures for the month of November are making for more negative headlines, as they probably should. There is little optimism in the latest data. Greater Vancouver home sales were down 53% on a year-over-year basis. Over the past two decades

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One Fell Swoop of The Pen

Last week we highlighted some recent data from Desjardins which noted that nearly every borrower who took out a fixed payment variable rate mortgage during the pandemic now owes more in interest than their original fixed payment. Trigger rates galore. It appears the Bank of Canada is finally coming around

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One Fell Swoop of The Pen

Last week we highlighted some recent data from Desjardins which noted that nearly every borrower who took out a fixed payment variable rate mortgage during the pandemic now owes more in interest than their original fixed payment. Trigger rates galore. It appears the Bank of Canada is finally coming around

Read More »

The House ATM Doesn’t Work Like it Used To. E

No bottom yet. Data published by CREA last week showed national house prices slid lower in the month of October, dropping 1.2% month-over-month. The national home price index is now down 15% since peaking in March earlier this year, the steepest correction on record since the index was created in

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