Dustan Woodhouse

First National Residential Market Commentary Caution and patience as we look ahead Oct 13, 2020 The latest employment numbers coupled with the September reports from the Toronto and Vancouver real estate boards have triggered a lot of optimism about Canada’s economic recovery and the state of the housing market.... Statistics Canada reports the economy added 378,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate dropped to 9%. Toronto realtors posted a record breaking 11,083 sales last month, up 42% from a year earlier. The benchmark price rose 14%, y-o-y. Vancouver had its best September ever: 3,643 sales, up more than 56% y-o-y. The benchmark price rose nearly 6%. All of these numbers continue to defy expectations and so caution and patience need to be the guiding principles as we try to figure out what will happen next. The employment numbers which are a key indicator of economic health surely got a boost with the reopening of schools. Parents who had been staying home to look after their kids became available for work again. But many are not back to full employment. The number of mothers working less than half their usual hours was 70% higher last month than before the shutdowns. For working-fathers the number is 23% higher. Overall, employment is still 25% lower than it was before the pandemic. And many of those jobs will not be coming back. Further job growth remains in jeopardy as the two, biggest jurisdictions in the country, Ontario and Quebec, re-introduce closures and restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, signals from the housing sector are mixed. Realtors continue to forecast rising sales and prices. But the market is imbalanced. Most of the gains are coming in ground-oriented units singles, semis and townhouses. Condos are seeing significantly smaller increases. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation continues to forecast that price declines, in the 10% area, will start showing up sometime around the middle of next year. Moody’s Analytics predicts a national peak-to-trough price decline of 7%. Both reports cite employment shortfalls, reduced immigration and increasing loan delinquencies.

Red line is reality. Dark line of despair is CMHC’s forecast, which as recently as Sept 7 they cling to as their own version of the future.

'The price increase is simple supply and demand'... yep. First National Residential Market Commentary - Just Delayed, Not Dormant Canada's real estate market made a remarkable recovery in July and there are expectations it will continue for another couple of months.... Back in the spring real estate was heading into one of the tightest markets in the past 20 years. Then the coronavirus pandemic was declared, governments imposed lockdowns and the economy ground to a halt, hobbling home sales. April saw some of the lowest numbers ever recorded. But it roared back to life in July. "Things may have gone quiet for a few months, but ultimately the market we’re seeing right now is mostly the same one we were heading into back in March," says Shaun Cathcart, CREA's Senior Economist. July sales shot up more than 30% compared to a year ago and 26% compared to June. The average price for a home in Canada hit a new record high of $571,500 -- an increase of more than 14% over July of 2019. COVID-19 did not destroy this year’s spring marketit mostly delayed it, says well known market watcher, economist Robert Hogue. He notes the busy spring market is now happening during the summer, as pent-up demand is released with the reopening of the economy. We expect further unwinding of pent-up demand to keep sales brisk in August and perhaps September before cooling later this year, says Hogue. The price increase is simple supply and demand. CREA's sales-to-new-listing ratio tightened to 73.9% in July, up more than 10 points from June and solidly in favour of sellers. A ratio between 40% and 60% is considered balanced. CREA's Cathcart expects to see demand continuing to outpace supply. "Some purchases will no doubt be delayed, but the new-found importance of home, lack of a daily commute for many, a desire for more outdoor and personal space, room for a home office, etc. will certainly also spur activity that otherwise would not have happened in a non-COVID-19 world, he says.

What role is CMHC (Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation) meant to play in the lives of young Canadians working towards purchasing a home of their own?

**The lead is buried deep in the text, a 790,000 swing regarding reality of job increase vs. predictions of job loss. The Real Estate sector will follow suit, as the knee-jerk predictions made by CMHC were predicated on numbers that have not home to pass such as the job loss/gain figures.** DW... First National Financial - Residential Market Commentary A little less bad = the new good Jul 6, 2020 First National Financial LP Not surprisingly the Canadian economy has taken a major hit over the past few months because of the coronavirus pandemic. Statistics Canada reports that output shrank by nearly 20% in March and April in the weeks immediately after governments moved to lockdown the country to stop the spread of COVID-19. Declines were recorded in all 20 categories tracked by StatsCan. On the up side, though, the contraction has not been as big as feared and there is actually a small recovery forecast for May. Initial projections show a modest 3.0% increase in economic activity. It is not much, but it would be the biggest one-month gain ever recorded and it could signal that April will be the low point in the crisis. May also saw the addition of 290,000 jobs, contradicting forecasts that had predicted another 500,000 job losses. Mortgage credit has continued to grow through the COVID crisis. Bank of Canada numbers put the outstanding balance at $1.68 trillion in May. That is up 0.6% from April and 6.0% from a year ago. None the less, the outlook is generally positive for June, with expectations for growth in both GDP and employment as more businesses reopen and more people are able to get back to work

Glimpses of Optimism; First National Residential Market Commentary Jun 22, 2020 Things are looking up, a little, as Canadians navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest measure of confidence delivered by Bloomberg and Nanos Research suggests Canadian consumers are feeling better about the economy, the recovery and home prices. ... The confidence index has been on a steady rebound, climbing for seven consecutive weeks, since plunging to record lows in April. In the latest survey it stands at 42.86, up nearly 3 points from the previous tally. (The surveys averaged 57 in the year before the pandemic.) The survey suggests Canadians increasingly feel that the worst of the pandemic-induced downturn is over, but the pessimists still outnumber the optimists by more than three-to-one. About 20% of those surveyed feel the economy will be stronger in six months while 62% believe it will be weaker. That is a significant change from the 80% who forecast things getting worse and the 7% who predicted improvement, just a few weeks ago. Forty-two percent of respondents say home prices will fall over the next six months. That is down from 49%, four weeks ago. There are other positive signs. Canadians do not appear to be loading up on more debt during the lockdown. The credit monitoring service, Equifax, reports consumer debt levels were almost 0.5% lower at the end of March, compared to a year earlier. This would seem to indicate that government support programs are working. Federal figures show the number of personal bankruptcies dropped to a record low in April. The numbers also suggest the youngest and the oldest demographics those often deemed to have the weakest ability to repay are borrowing less.