Home sales are bouncing back to life across Canada. Calgary Real Estate prices hit new record highs. The banking crisis is far from over as contagion risks start to spread. The Fed hikes rates another 25bps but a pause appears likely. Markets are calling for rate cuts as soon as this fall. 

Happy Monday Morning! We’ve talked a lot about the recent mismatch between population growth in this country and the ability to deliver enough new housing supply to not only meet demand but actually moderate price growth. Housing is all about supply and demand after all. We’ve tried to obliterate demand but it seemingly won’t go away. Here’s a short list of demand side policies in no particular order in recent years: Thanks for reading The Saretsky Report! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Subscribe Every level of government has tried to slow demand with little results. Yes some of these policies lack real teeth, and yes we did kill the high-end luxury market. The luxury market remains on life support when we told foreigners to stop sending their money over here. So while we have eliminated the foreign owned pied-à-terre, we have not actually made housing more affordable for the average Canadian, it’s actually gotten worse! It seems obvious we must now seriously look at the supply side of the equation. If it feels like i’ve been beating a dead horse in recent months I apologize. But please consider the following. CMHC just dropped its latest

The housing market continues to turn higher, yet wages are actually rolling over. Latest data shows wage growth is now sharply negative in real terms. Banking issues in the US have not gone away. The Bank of Canada is fully expecting a recession. CN Rail says the recession is already here. 

Happy Monday Morning! We’ve talked a lot about immigration. Remember, the Feds targeted 430,000 permanent residents in 2022 and hit those with ease. Those targets have been set even higher moving forward. However, the real issue here is these figures do not include non-permanent residents. It seems strange to omit these people considering the fact that once you factor them into the calculations our population actually ballooned by a million people in 2022. This is either incompetence or a total blind spot at the federal level. It’s something I discussed this past week on our podcast with former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. It gets more complicated when you consider its actually the responsibility of provincial and municipal governments to approve new housing supply. Suffice to say getting three large bureaucratic governments on the same page is like running a marathon with a pebble in your shoe. If you manage to limbo through all the red tape, congrats. Your next challenge is eating a doubling in financing costs, volatile and rising construction costs, and a never ending increase in development charges. In fact, CMHC just pumped their development fees by 100-200% on their rental construction financing program. It’s no wonder housing starts are

Headline inflation falls to 4.2% in March. National house prices are back on the rise with housing starts still falling. Government employees striking across the nation as the cost of living crisis persists, potentially entrenching higher wage inflation. Former head of the Conservative Party Erin O’Toole joins the show.

Happy Monday Morning! For the first time in a year Canadian home prices ticked higher. Monthly data published by CREA noted a very modest 0.2% month over month increase in national home prices. However, regular readers here know this has been ongoing for several months now. Prices in most major markets, across most product type, have been pushing higher since January. Yes, it’s certainly surprising given mortgage rates, while they have stabilized, remain elevated. The macro doesn’t look great, lots of chatter about a looming recession, stubbornly elevated inflation, and potential job losses ahead. There are a lot of risks out there yet home buyers seem willing to compete in bidding wars. Here’s the problem. The majority of home buyers aren’t thinking about the macro. Most people just want a house to live in. And so the micro trumps the macro, at least in the short run. And the micro data overwhelmingly shows that demand is outpacing supply. The number of new listings hitting the MLS hit another 20 year low in the month of March. Yes, you had to go all the way back to the year 2003 when new listings were this low. There was 3.9 months of

The Bank of Canada kept interest rates on hold while raising GDP growth forecasts. Meanwhile, land loans to developers have completely evaporated, sowing the seeds for a supply crunch years down the road. CPI in the US eases but core inflation is proving to be sticky. Warren Buffett takes a surprise trip to Japan. Germany shuts down more nuclear plants.

Happy Monday Morning! A few weeks ago I wrote a post called Everything is a Choice. I argued that many of the housing issues we are facing today are policy decisions. They are choices made by elected officials. Whether it be interest rates, immigration policy, taxes, mortgage underwriting standards, or municipal zoning. Many of these issues can be addressed with the stroke of a pen. Love him or hate him, David Eby is doing just that. The new premier of BC just announced single-family zoning across British Columbia communities will come to an end as early as this fall, when the provincial government is expected to introduce legislation that overrides the zoning regulations of municipal governments. The legislation changes would allow up to four homes on a traditional single-family lot in municipalities across the province. This enables homeowners to create secondary suites, such as basement units or potentially even duplexes, townhomes, and triplexes. This is what you call missing middle housing and it is badly needed. “Without more types of homes, we risk pushing more of our future generation away. We risk creating neighbourhoods where playgrounds are quiet, sidewalks are empty, and coffee shops are vacant. Small-scale, multi-unit homes are how

Sweeping policy changes are coming on the housing supply front in Vancouver. Meanwhile, TD Bank has become the worlds most shorted bank stock, facing $3.7B of short interest. Is this the end of the US Dollar? Dutch Farmers Revolt ! 

Happy Monday Morning! Everywhere you scroll these days there is some debate about the housing mess, people arguing on social media, all levels of government pointing fingers and blaming each other for the housing crisis. “Vote for me and i’ll fix housing.” It is all political theatre. Case in point for those following along at home, the federal government introduced a two year ban on foreign purchasers of residential real estate this year. The same government that labelled people xenophobic a few years ago for even suggesting a foreign buyer ban. They folded like a cheap tent in the wind after mounting political pressure and quickly rushed a new bill through. By doing so the new law prevented many developers from acquiring residential land for the purposes of building new housing supply. You see, many local developers are private corporations with non-Canadian equity partners. Any developer with more than 3% of its corporation controlled by a foreigner was prevented from acquiring new land to develop housing. In other words, you’re a local Vancouver developer but your capital partner in the US who controls part of the company prevents you from building purpose-built rental condos. So new housing supply gets throttled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTpzXUchlY4

Happy Monday Morning! Many of the issues we are facing today are policy decisions. They are choices made by elected officials. While I believe most policy makers are well intentioned it doesn’t mean we should not hold them accountable when mistakes are made. After all, elected officials are put in place to serve the best interests of its citizens, this is why we go to the polls every four years. And so it is worth evaluating some of the data this week to discuss where we could be going wrong. Let’s start with inflation. A global pandemic emerged and our elected officials made the decision to shut down the global economy. It turns out it’s easier to turn off the economy than it is to turn it back on. Governments panicked and the floodgates opened. Massive deficit spending. Too many dollars facing too few goods. And while spending has slowed, it’s still 11.3% higher than pre-pandemic levels on a real per capita basis. This is only making the Bank of Canada’s job even harder! Please keep this in mind when the federal government unveils their budget this week. While inflation is now slowing, it remains elevated, and largely self inflicted.