A thread on some of the bigger issues with 🇨🇦's obsession with real estate as an investment.

Firstly, the issues surrounding investors buying condos vs low-rise houses are quite different. 🧵⤵️ The fact that most of Canada’s rental supply has been filled by investors buying condos and converting them to rentals is a product of our government’s decision decades ago to not invest in and prioritize permanent rental housing 2/

A bungalow in East York has been redeveloped into a small condo with (what appears to be) 4 units.

This link is for the biggest unit, 3 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, listed for $1.6M 1/
realosophy.com/listing/3-319-…
Here's the garden suite, which is listed for $1.3M 2/
realosophy.com/listing/4-319-…

Federal Liberals Take A Big Step Towards Making Homes More Affordable 🧵⤵️
movesmartly.com/articles/feder… Last week, Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, announced that the Liberal federal government plans to reduce the number of non-permanent residents (NPR) in Canada from the current 6.2% share of total population to 5% over the next three years. 2/

The housing narrative in 🇨🇦 is changing

This piece argues that 🇨🇦’s 🏠 crisis cannot be solved with a singular focus on building more homes

It suggests that 🇨🇦 should reduce the number of non-permanent residents by 1M people to ease the demand for 🏠
thehub.ca/2024-02-21/mik… This is a very big change in the main narrative re: our housing crisis

For years, most experts & politicians argued that the solution to our 🏠 crisis was to "Build More Homes"

Countless op-eds and editorials were written blaming supply restrictions for our housing crisis 2/

Why did our federal government ignore the warnings of public servants if the impact of Canada’s high population growth on housing was so obvious?

If you rewind the clock by more than 2 years, you'll see that these impacts were not so obvious to some 1/
movesmartly.com/articles/the-f… Most housing economists at that time concluded that Canada’s booming population wasn’t the key driver of rising home prices.

The key driver of rapidly rising home prices, they argued, was a “lack of supply” driven mainly by municipal inefficiencies and zoning restrictions 2/

Toronto-based developer that vowed to buy up $1 billion in single-family homes plans to add 10,000 more houses to its portfolio

Why can't young families afford their own homes?

Because they now have to compete with Billion dollar companies 1/
thestar.com/real-estate/to… Homes in Canada have become financial assets for the rich

“We have a large corporation going into smaller communities, scooping up affordable units, making them inaccessible for many of the local residents, and renting them out to the corporation’s sole advantage” 2/

In my June report, I discussed the Conservative’s “Insane” Solution to Canada’s Housing Crisis

Earlier this month, Conservative housing critic Scott Aitchison was on a podcast to discuss what it will take to fix Canada’s crisis 🧵
thestar.com/podcasts/its-p… Aitchison’s solution was simple “we need more supply”

How much more?

He argued Canada needs to triple the number of homes we are building

While Aitchison did recognize that tripling housing completions is “insane” he still thinks this is the solution to our housing crisis 2/

No, every word in this speech is not in fact correct

Home prices did not double every few years under the previous Harper government

Home prices have increased more rapidly under this government 1/

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1642178610344886274

Here's a piece I wrote in 2021 showing how home prices changed under the Harper gov vs the current Trudeau government in Toronto

2/
movesmartly.com/articles/how-t…

Things aren’t looking good for housing affordability in 🇨🇦

Pierre actually believes that if he fines cities that “block homes” this will magically result in builders doubling the number of 🏡 they build

Ahmed thinks he’s doing a great job to make housing affordable Pierre’s argument is quite bad because he’s trying to argue that “big city governments” ie. Toronto and Vancouver are causing our national housing crisis

It’s of course easy (and popular with his conservative base) to blame the big cities that traditionally vote Liberal 2/

A quick thread that I think summarizes what is happening on the ground right now in Toronto's housing market

How sellers are calling the shots, are holding back inventory & why it's so frustrating for buyers ⤵️🧵 We have clients who made an offer last might on a home that got 20 offers

They made a competitive bid but the listing agent advised that there were better offers

Not a problem

But just before midnight, they emailed everyone to say they didn't accept any offer 2/

One of the problems with Toronto's housing market right now is that 90% of the agents out there have no idea what they are doing

A house in my neighbourhood was listed for $900K and sold for $1.265M - a sale price that is relatively reasonable but....they had 23 offers 1/ I suspect that out of the 23 offers

7 offered under $1.1M
10 from $1.1M-$1.2M
3 in the low $1.2M range
3 were in the mid $1.2M range

This of course is just a guess, but I've been doing this long enough to be confident that the distribution looks something like this 2/

A brief thread on what I’m seeing in Toronto’s housing market right now

I’m going to try to bridge the on the ground anecdotes & market sentiment with actual data 🧵⤵️ Firstly, sales this month will be the second lowest for the month of January in 20 years

But new listings will also be the second lowest for the month of January in 20 years

The market is not oversupplied, it’s actually undersupplied, especially for low-rise houses 2/

A great look at why our housing market and healthcare system are breaking

Because our federal government wants a massive immigration boom without ever investing the time to consider how they’ll house and care for the health of these new Canadians 1/
theglobeandmail.com/business/artic… For some Canadians the upward pressure this puts on home prices and on rents for the poorest Canadians because we can’t build enough homes to meet this demand is one of the desired outcomes

I don’t think that’s optimal, but I’m clearly in the minority 2/

A tenant not paying rent for up to a year is difficult for a landlord to manage during the best of times

But in today's market with much higher debt payments, a decline in home equity & incomes that are less secure

It could be disastrous leading to insolvency in months 1/

https://twitter.com/RE_MarketWatch/status/1585499914267774976

What’s worse is that the landlord cannot just list their investment property for sale to unload their debt obligations and rental arrears

An investment property where the tenant isn't paying rent and refuses to vacate is effectively unsellable 2/

A few thoughts on what appears to be a trend

Anonymous twitter users who have decided to make it a part time job to disparage the reputation and integrity of people in the real estate industry

Some agents might deserve it, but this below is complete nonsense 1/

https://twitter.com/saretskysego/status/1584721646111272965

Firstly, the people who I see in the press from the RE industry commenting on the housing market are always giving an honest look at what is happening on the ground

If they were in fact perma-bulls, journalists would smell that a mile away and never interview them again 2/

This is an intertesting result, and not the result I expected

While national home prices can handle further declines, if things start to trend down rapidly does our government just sit around and do nothing or do they intervene?

I voted that they would intervene 🧵⤵️

https://twitter.com/JohnPasalis/status/1562080764229025793

I don't think it's going to happen any time soon and if the price declines are gradual and relatively modest, I don't think they'll do anything

But low-rise prices in the GTA fell 25% in 5 months and if that rate of decline continues I would be surprised if they don't step in 2/

Home prices exploded the past 2 years because of cheap money

Buyers could get a 5 year mortgage for 1.75%

Today’s prices don’t work well with 5 year mortgage rates at 5.5% and the mortgage stress test at 7-8%

So what’s going to happen? 🧵⤵️ The short-term trend we can be confident about is that high rates will destroy demand

Why?

A year ago the mortgage payment for every $100K was around $400, today it’s closer to $600

So even though prices are down a bit since Feb, mortgage payments are up 50% 2/

Time to put some numbers behind the anecdotes many have been hearing about Toronto's housing market slowing down

While we normally look at real estate stats monthly, when the market is changing quickly (as it is today) we need to look at stats weekly to spot the change🧵⤵️ First, a quick note about year over year comparisons.

The charts I'm sharing show weekly stats for 2019-2022.

The only normal pre-Covid year of course is 2019 and in some ways is the best comparison. In 2020 we had the first lockdown in March and 2021 was a wild year 2/

“I know people who are buying 50 and 20 [pre-con condos], they are going to assign them,”

It's very difficult to have an affordable housing market when most of your new housing supply is being bought by real estate speculators 1/ theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/ar… “Anecdotally, a rising share of investors have been purchasing presale condos recently, with the expectation of assigning rather than holding for rental due to quickly accelerating prices and lower expected rental cash flow,” @Urbanation 2/

If you were looking for some hope that our government is taking rapidly rising home prices seriously, unfortunately today's federal budget did not deliver.

A few thoughts on today's budget 🧵
budget.gc.ca/2022/report-ra… They introduced a Tax-Free First Home Savings Account which would work a lot like an RRSP with an annual limit of $8K and total limit of $40K per person.

I just don’t know why they would set the limit at only $8K 2/

I suspect Mike is correct that most of the speculative buying is likely local mom & pop investors - but I still think meaningful measures are needed to curb speculative buying of single family homes by foreign investors and REITs for a number of reasons 1/

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/1512029776390807553?s=21&t=6tlqQ5j0vdtO5qWNDejSEA

I should start by saying that my opinion is rooted in the belief that the primary buyer of single family homes should be owner occupants - not investors, foreign or domestic who are just using homes as another asset in their portfolio. 2/