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.
April 10th, 2023 | Missing Middle
Steve Saretsky Blog - 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 […]
April 3rd, 2023 | Dissenting
Steve Saretsky Blog - 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 […]
March 27th, 2023 | Everything is a Choice
Steve Saretsky Blog - 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 […]
March 20th, 2023 | Gone Missing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! National housing data dropped for the month of February, and there’s a lot to unpack here. Home sales plunged 40% year-over-year in February, coming off a blistering hot market this time last year. When you zoom out further it was the weakest February since 2009. However, there’s a caveat. New listings utterly […]
March 13th, 2023 | Gradually, then Suddenly
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Central banks finally broke something. After leaving rates hovering near zero for over a decade and engaging in trillions of dollars worth of QE (Quantitative Easing) you can’t simply raise interest rates by 400bps in less than a year without something going boom in the night. It was never a matter of […]
March 6th, 2023 | Extend and Pretend
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Canadian banks reported first quarter earnings this past week. Those earnings provided an important glimpse into what’s shaping the nations housing market. Deep in the footnotes, CIBC reported that $52-billion worth of mortgages – the equivalent of 20% of the bank’s $263-billion residential loan portfolio were in a position where the borrower’s monthly payment […]
February 27th, 2023 | Banking on the Gravy Train
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Some good news on the inflation front in Canada this past week. Headline inflation ticked in at 5.9% year-over-year, below market expectations of 6.1%. Inflation in services, which is one of the key figures policymakers are watching, eased to 5.3%, from 5.6% in December. The Bank of Canada’s preferred median and trim […]
February 20th, 2023 | Social Crisis
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! National housing figures dropped this past week, and it wasn’t pretty. January home sales fell 37% year-over-year, a sharp decline from the blistering hot bull market of January 2022. When you zoom out further, this January was the slowest since 2009. However, balancing this out was a dearth of supply trickling to […]
February 13th, 2023 | Swimming Naked
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Those holding their breath for an easing in mortgage rates were delivered some tough news last week. The Canadian labour market added 150,000 jobs in January, more than TEN times economist estimates. Let’s not forget that December jobs numbers were TWENTY times estimates. Just what the hell is going on here? Either […]
February 6th, 2023 | No Bull, Caution Ahead
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Lots of chatter these days about increased activity in the housing market. It’s true open houses are busier, stale inventory that’s been sitting for months is suddenly under contract, and some new listings are fetching multiple offers. Quite a difference four weeks can make. Is this the end of the housing bear […]
January 30th, 2023 | Finding a Bid
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! As expected, one and done from the BoC this past week. Here’s Tiff Macklem, “With today’s modest increase, we expect to pause rate hikes while we assess the impacts. To be clear, this is a conditional pause. Its conditional on economic developments evolving broadly inline with our outlook.” For those playing along […]
January 23rd, 2023 | A Healthy Cleansing
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! We got more encouraging news on the inflation front. Consumer prices in Canada fell on a seasonally adjusted basis, dropping -0.1% month over month, the first drop since July 2020. Yes, annual inflation still looks very high at 6.3%, but that only tells us what happened a year ago. We discussed these big […]
January 16th, 2023 | Big, Fat, Laggy Indexes
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Canadian inflation data drops this week on Wednesday, January 17th. This will be an important headline given that the Bank of Canada is set to meet the following week on January 25th. As of right now the market is still expecting a 25bps rate hike, but that could change if CPI comes […]
January 9th, 2023 | Brace for a Year of Volatility Ahead
Steve Saretsky Blog - Happy Monday Morning! Back to our regularly scheduled programming after a few weeks off during the holidays. Last year was an eventful year across the Canadian Real Estate spectrum to say the least. I figured i’d start off the New Year with a quick sentiment check. And the survey says… things are going to get […]
December 21st, 2022 | The Saretsky Report – December 2022
The Saretsky Report - Sales activity remains subdued across Greater Vancouver as we close out the year. Buyers are tepid, not eager to write offers and are looking to negotiate, can you blame them? Sales activity remains historically weak. In the month of November, sales across Greater Vancouver totalled 1624, down 54% from November 2021 and marking the third […]
December 19th, 2022 | Better Balance
Steve Saretsky Blog - Bank of Canada Governor, Tiff Macklem, delivered some final comments this week at a keynote speech in BC. He didn’t mince words following the fastest rate hiking cycle in recent history. “There’s no question that if you bought a house near the peak, you took a variable rate mortgage with a high loan to income […]
December 12th, 2022 | A Pause, But Not a Pivot
Steve Saretsky Blog - To no surprise, the Bank of Canada raised rates again this past week. Another 50bps. Interest rates are now up a whopping 400bps since this tightening cycle began in March. According to Macquarie Research, this is the sharpest calendar year of rate hikes on record going back to 1936. The most common rebuttal you see […]
December 5th, 2022 | Collateral Damage
Steve Saretsky Blog - Lots to unpack this week so let’s dive in. Sales figures for the month of November are making for more negative headlines, as they probably should. There is little optimism in the latest data. Greater Vancouver home sales were down 53% on a year-over-year basis. Over the past two decades there have only been two […]
November 29th, 2022 | One Fell Swoop of The Pen
Steve Saretsky Blog - Last week we highlighted some recent data from Desjardins which noted that nearly every borrower who took out a fixed payment variable rate mortgage during the pandemic now owes more in interest than their original fixed payment. Trigger rates galore. It appears the Bank of Canada is finally coming around to the same conclusion. In a research […]
November 21st, 2022 | The House ATM Doesn’t Work Like it Used To
Steve Saretsky Blog - No bottom yet. Data published by CREA last week showed national house prices slid lower in the month of October, dropping 1.2% month-over-month. The national home price index is now down 15% since peaking in March earlier this year, the steepest correction on record since the index was created in 2005. Just for comparison sake, […]
November 17th, 2022 | The Saretsky Report – November 2022
The Saretsky Report - As we expected and discussed in last months report, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates another 50bps in October. Markets were pricing in a 75bps rate hike but the Bank of Canada failed to deliver, citing growing concerns around financial stability. It’s the first time in awhile they have flagged financial stability concerns, which […]
November 1st, 2022 | Runaway Freight Trains
Steve Saretsky Blog - The Bank of Canada raised rates by another 50bps this past week, pushing prime rate to 5.95% and inflicting more pain on variable rate mortgage holders. We’ll circle back to that in a second. What’s important to note here is markets were fully pricing in a 75bps rate hike from the Bank of Canada and […]
October 25th, 2022 | The Beatings Will Continue
Steve Saretsky Blog - Inflation in Canada slowed less than expected, growing by 6.9% year-over-year in September, economist expectations were at 6.7%. A small miss that will have big ramifications. Markets immediately repriced Bank of Canada rate hike odds for October 26th, now expecting another jumbo 75bps rate hike. In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves. […]
October 18th, 2022 | The Saretsky Report – October 2022
The Saretsky Report - It was another slow month for the Greater Vancouver housing market in September. While housing activity was historically low, there is still much to talk about across the housing spectrum. The volatility across global financial markets has been extreme and that is no doubt having a major influence on our local housing market. Interest rates […]
October 17th, 2022 | Faulty Models & Mortgage Fraud
Steve Saretsky Blog - The closely watched US Consumer price index surprised to the upside last week. Consumer prices rose by 0.4% in September, and while inflation is decelerating, down to 8.2% year-over-year, it remains extremely elevated. The recent advance was broad based, with Shelter, food and medical care being the largest contributors. Shelter inflation is surging, at least […]