Truly Mind-Blowing Housing Data From Canada 🇨🇦 - InvestingChannel

Truly Mind-Blowing Housing Data From Canada 🇨🇦

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Truly Mind-Blowing Housing Data From Canada 🇨🇦

It’s the second week of October. Street cleaning week in The Juice’s neighborhood. And the fifth installment in our Housing is Haunted series. Turns out that many Canadians will do just about anything to not have to park on the street. To have a driveway and home they can call their own. 

The data we’re about to discuss blew our mind, even from an America long obsessed with home ownership. 

But first … a few pieces of street and house cleaning

First, check out today’s Trackstar list of the most-searched Canadian large cap ETFs. We like to cover Canada occasionally in The Juice. In fact, we’ll spend an installment soon digging into the holdings of those ETFs. Always a useful and informative exercise. 

If you’d like more Canada coverage, check out another one of our newsletters—The Bacon. Three days a week, it includes top news and insights curated for Canadian investors from our network of 100+ financial sites. 

Second, last Thursday our Housing is Haunted series considered housing in relation to climate change

One of our subscribers — Bill in South Carolina — obviously takes where to live amid a warming planet seriously. He chimed in with an interesting story about what he’s doing, edited gently for length:  

My son and I are both chemists, and we both agree the climate is changing, has changed, and will continue to change for reasons that Man and paying more taxes have little if any effect on. I live in rural SC and he lives in NV with a 5 yr old daughter …

He wanted to find a climate escape area for his daughter in an area that is projected to be cooler and wetter than the NV area. His time frame was when she finished school and wanted a nice place to live. He wanted to get a few acres in Maine where she could build a house near a big city where she could work … 

We bought 105 acres of recently cut timber land. It is near Bangor, Green Lake and the coast. It has road frontage. It has huge development potential long term. We manage it as part of our tree farm system, so all expenses are tax deductable…

That’s how we approach distant housing needs with respect to climate change.

Wow. Now, that’s hardcore. Good job, Bill. 

Third, for the record, in September, the average global temperature was a record 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. In climate terms, that’s a lot. Scientists are calling it mind-blowing. In Portland, Maine, the average temp for September was 64.1 degrees, which is 2.5 degrees higher than that city’s norm. 

Fourth, The Juice loves hearing from readers. If you have something to say or want to offer suggestions for topics you’d like to see us cover, please drop us a line to say hello

If you’re from Canada, please help explain this somewhat conflicting data—

  • 93% of Canadians say competition among homebuyers and interest rates have influenced their choices to purchase a home. 
  • 43% want to take the plunge before prices move higher.

But, at the same time—

  • 92% report that inflation impacts their ability to afford their home. 
  • 30% say they barely have money left at the end of the month to buy “extras.”
  • 10% can’t even satisfy basic needs.

Even so, nearly half of the survey respondents note that, even if interest rates rise again before the end of the year, they’d still be happy with their properties. 

A Canadian newspaper summarized all of this with the headline—

Canadians willing to sacrifice financial security for homeownership

To some extent we agree. It seems crazy to be so tied to home ownership you’ll accept barely being able to or not even making ends meet. On the other hand, what choice do Canadians have? 

The Juice recently presented some of the data

Canada ain’t cheap. Consider these Canadian provinces and their average home prices, as of July 2023:

  • British Columbia: $967,948
  • Ontario: $856,269
  • Quebec: $479,004
  • Alberta: $455,923
  • Nova Scotia: $435,293
  • Prince Edward Island: $402,6
  • Saskatchewan: $305,669
  • Newfoundland and Labrador: $304,765

And rents aren’t much better. In September, the average apartment rent in the country hit a record high of $2,117. In the big cities, that’s nothing. One-bedroom pads in Vancouver and Toronto go for $2,438 and $2,361 on average. 

In June, we noted

Mortgage interest rates are on the rise in Canada as well. The increase the country experienced just the week before last means that new homeowners will pay a minimum of $11 more each month for every $100,000 financed. So, on that $861,000 property, we’re talking a monthly mortgage payment of around $100 more today than it was just a couple weeks ago.

That was in June. 

Consider the most recent data from last week, via The Financial Post

Borrowers with fixed rates are expected to see an average payment increase of between 14 per cent and 25 per cent next year compared with early 2022 costs, according to the Bank of Canada. In 2025 and 2026, payments should rise between 20 per cent to 25 per cent.

Those with full variable rates have already taken on the burden of higher rates, seeing their payments rise an average of 49 per cent as of this year.

Wow. Talk about mind-blowing. 

 

The Bottom Line: Put this chapter of the Housing is Haunted series in the you think you’ve got it bad as an American file. Those numbers on mortgages are just stratospheric in a Canada where housing prices are just as high, rates are rising and, unlike America, variable rate mortgages have been a thing

But that’s the thing. Where do you turn? If you want to live in a major, or not even that major – metro in Canada, you have to pony up whether it’s for rent and a mortgage. Misery loves company and makes you feel even closer when you share a border and an affinity for cold beer and french fries smothered in stuff.

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