Canadian real estate fundamentals

Last week was the Vancouver Real Estate Forum. Benjamin Tal (chief economist at CIBC) opened things up, as he usually does, and he was pretty candid about what might be coming this winter. Here is an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article summarizing the event:

“It’s reasonable to assume that the next six months will not be very pretty,” said Mr. Tal. “The honeymoon of the summer is basically over. Now we enter the winter months, and I think the next few months will be much more difficult. We will have a situation where we will clearly see a second wave, and it’s already starting. This second wave will overlap with the flu season, so everybody will be very confused. The fear factor will rise, and that’s something we have to take into account when we look at the trajectory of the economy.”

Indeed, today kind of feels like the official start of the second wave. Here in Toronto, indoor dining, gyms, and a bunch of other things were just shut down for the next 28 days.

But I think the more important takeaway from the article is this one here: the fundamentals around Canadian real estate remain incredibly strong. Another excerpt:

“Let’s visit the market in 2023: I suggest the market will show the same trend we have seen in as 2019. This is a pause, but the fundamentals of the real estate market in Canada are so strong that the demand factor will continue to be there and supply will be limited. I suggest that after a two- to three-year period of some sort of softness, despite the V-shaped recovery that we are seeing, I see continuation of the trend.”

As I’ve said before on the blog, it’s easy to get caught up in shorter-term and ephemeral headlines. But if one can look through some of that to the other side of this health crisis, I think we would all be in a position to make better decisions.

As a general rule, I don’t like making long-term real estate decisions based on what is expected to take place in the next 6 months.