ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
Steve Saretsky
Steve Saretsky is a Vancouver residential Realtor and author behind one of Vancouver’s most popular real estate blogs, Vancity Condo Guide. Steve is widely considered a thought leader in the industry with regular appearances on BNN, CBC, CKNW, CTV and as a contributor to BC Business Magazine. Steve provides advisory services to banks, hedge funds, developers, and various types of investors.
November 18th, 2024 | Wildly Offside
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! After completely botching a world class immigration system, the Trudeau government has been forced to reverse course, promising to hit the brakes and slow population growth to zero over the next two years. However, as we know, the damage is already done and it will take more than a decade to fix […]
November 4th, 2024 | Pigs at the Trough
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! We do our best to steer clear of politics in this newsletter. However, housing is political. Housing is impacted by all levels of government, from the federal government at the top, the provincial government in the middle, and all the way down to your municipal council member. Our housing crisis is largely […]
October 28th, 2024 | Heading to Zero
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! As expected, Macklem and Co slashed rates by 50bps this past week, citing slower growth and a softening labour market. Further adding, “if the economy evolves broadly in line with our latest forecast, we expect to reduce the policy rate further.” Remember that line, we’ll come back to it. So the Bank […]
October 21st, 2024 | Jumbo Cuts
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Some good news on the inflation front. Headline CPI cooled to 1.6% in September, slower than the median estimate of 1.8% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. For the first time since February 2021 inflation is now below the central bank’s 2% target and has been within its target range for nine […]
October 7th, 2024 | Cheaper Mortgages?
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! I just got back from presenting at the annual Veritas Real Estate conference in Toronto. The conference, which caters towards investment professionals and financial institutions engaged in a healthy debate on the direction of our housing market. There was a lengthy discussion on interest rates, which is undoubtedly one of, if not the largest […]
September 30th, 2024 | Free Markets
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! This newsletter isn’t all bad news. We finally got some good policy out of Ottawa this past week. OSFI, the banking regulator, announced it will finally remove the stress test for homeowners who wish to switch lenders at mortgage renewal time. Under previous guidelines, when the mortgage term ended and a borrower […]
September 23rd, 2024 | Fire in a Crowded Theatre
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Last week I wrote a note titled ‘Connecting the Dots’ in which we highlighted the impending crisis brewing in the new construction market. New home sales are at 20 year lows in the GTA, and there’s nearly 10,000 unsold units in Greater Vancouver. People who bought pre-sale near the peak paid way […]
September 16th, 2024 | Connecting the Dots
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Today we’re going to play a game of connect the dots. As we already know, the resale condo market is weak, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto. Rates went up a lot, basically destroying the math behind owning rental properties in these two cities. Condo investors are suddenly faced with rising mortgage payments, […]
September 9th, 2024 | Jobs, Not Rates
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! The Bank of Canada slashed rates again, the third time in this rate cutting cycle, and more cuts are coming. Markets are pricing in another 50bps of rate cuts by year end. Will this be enough to resuscitate the housing market back to life? The Real Estate industry certainly wants to belive […]
August 26th, 2024 | Just a Hunch
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! For an overly indebted Canadian household sector grappling with rising interest payments, there was a lot to be pleased with this week. Canada’s CPI inflation came in at a breezy 2.5% in July. The deceleration was broad-based and marked the seventh consecutive month of headline rates running within the central bank’s target […]
August 19th, 2024 | Keeping the Lights On
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Big news on the housing supply front. Housing starts surprisingly rose to the highest level in more than a year. Construction was started on an annualized 279,509 units in July, according to CMHC. That’s the highest level since June 2023, and exceeded the 245,000 units expected by economists. Downturn? What downturn? Source: […]
August 12th, 2024 | Slinging Mud
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! The cost of living and housing affordability remain the top areas of concern amongst Canadians, according to recent polling surveys. We’ve got an important provincial election this fall in BC, and the feds next year. If you’re a policy maker it’s time to look busy and that’s exactly what they’re doing- slinging mud […]
July 29th, 2024 | Cash Flow Problems
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! As expected, the Bank of Canada slashed rates another 25bps this past week. It was a dovish press conference, with Tiff emphasizing excess supply in the economy. In the words of the BoC, economic growth likely picked up to about 1.5% through the first half of this year. However, with robust population […]
July 22nd, 2024 | Cutting Time
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Headline CPI inflation decelerated in June to 2.7% year-on-year, slightly cooler than expected. The average of the Bank of Canada’s preferred core inflation measures also held steady at 2.8%. Some people would argue the job is not done, inflation must be returned to 2% and not a basis point higher, the same […]
July 15th, 2024 | The Speculator as Hero
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! We’re now in the dog days of Summer, a historically slow time for housing markets that is being compounded by weaker economic activity. The unemployment rate in Canada is up 1.6 percentage points from the lows, which is already a larger increase off the lows than in several recessions over the past […]
July 8th, 2024 | Whistleblower
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Canada is a great country, we are a rich country with an abundance of natural resources, good people, and a generally stable democratic system. There is so much to look forward to, so much potential, however, there’s no doubt we have stumbled in recent years. This is largely due to poor policy, […]
June 25th, 2024 | Luxury Troubles
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! National house prices slid lower in the month of May, falling 2.4% from last year. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the national home price index is now down 14% since peaking in February 2022, marking the steepest decline since the index was created back in 2005, per CREA. Source: CREA It’s true […]
June 17th, 2024 | A Heist of Tax Dollars
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! It was just a few weeks ago when PM Trudeau lamented on the need for affordable housing while at the same time saying housing needs to retain value since it makes up such a large part of people’s retirements. In other words, the prime minister is trying to ride two horses with […]
June 10th, 2024 | Enjoy The Moment
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! As widely anticipated, the Bank of Canada slashed rates this past week, cutting by 25bps. The move was celebrated across the nation, not just by Realtors and mortagage brokers but provincial leaders in BC & Ontario. The economy is struggling so much so that it warrants a rate cut, and this is […]
June 3rd, 2024 | No Panacea
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! Housing affordability, or lack thereof, is all the rage these days. Politicians from every colour of the political rainbow are rallying around restoring some semblance of price stability, or so they say. They’ve been working hard lately, through mass rezoning, tax breaks on new rental construction, and even housing catalogues. In fact, […]
May 27th, 2024 | Hoping for the Cut
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy monday morning! The Bank of Canada got the news they needed ahead of their rate announcement on June 05. CPI inflation decelerated to 2.7% year-over-year in April, down from 2.9% in March, and remaining below the upper end of the Bank of Canada’s 1% to 3% target range for the fourth consecutive month. The […]
May 20th, 2024 | The Lost Decade
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! It’s a big week for central bank watchers and debt holders alike. The CPI report for the month of April drops tomorrow, it’s the last CPI before the Bank of Canada meets on June 05. Markets are currently pricing in just shy of 50% odds that Tiff cuts in June. It’s a […]
May 13th, 2024 | Happy Monday morning!
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! The labour market in Canada has weakened but hasn’t cracked, at least not yet. The economy added 90,000 jobs in the month of April, far surpassing all forecasts while also marking the largest employment increase in more than a year. What a pickle for the Bank of Canada. Rate cut expectations continue […]
May 6th, 2024 | Balance Sheet Woes
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! The housing market is taking an early turn, cooling swiftly in the month of April. The month of April usually marks the middle of the busy spring selling season so it’s rather unusual to see things fizzle out this early. The problem wasn’t so much that home sales were weak, up from […]
April 29th, 2024 | Happy Monday Morning!
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday morning! Last week we wrote about the big lie, the federal government claims they are going to build 3.9 million homes over the next seven years. Remember that’s 1528 homes per day, or 64 homes per hour for 7 straight years, no weekends off. So unless the homes look like this, I have some […]