housing market: Latest News

A new savings vehicle for Canadians saving towards their first home purchase will technically be available starting April 1, but financial institutions who spoke to Global News say they won’t be ready to offer the account on that date and Ottawa offered no timeline for when deposits might start flowing.

This article is part of Global News’s Home School series, which gives Canadians the basics they need to know about the housing market that they never learned in school.Entering the housing market is viewed by many Canadians as an attractive choice, both financially and for the security of having a home to call your own.The goal is common enough, but the how and when are trickier. How do you know when the timing is right to jump to owning from renting or living with family? Read more: Should you rent or buy a home? Why that calculation might be changing What makes the question so difficult is that it’s not just a matter of dollars and cents — personal circumstances, long-term goals and other life changes all factor into what ends up being, for many, the biggest financial decision of their lives.Here’s what you need to know before you look to buy your first home.There’s one thing that can’t be ignored when buying a home — how much money you’re bringing in.Comparator site Ratehub.ca recently took a look at the minimum income needed to afford a home across 10 Canadian cities.

One of Canada’s big banks is calling for the country’s cooling housing market to hit a low point in the spring before fully adjusting to rising interest rates.

Rising interest rates and other headwinds in the construction industry have pushed builders in some Canadian markets to shelve condominium projects, while others say condo demand will hold up as supply remains tight.

The Bank of Canada is likely to hike its benchmark interest rate another half a percentage point on June 1, further raising the cost of borrowing to tackle “persistent” inflation levels not seen in 30 years, economists predict.

The apparent cooling in Canada’s housing market is leaving many buyers and sellers alike confused about how to price and bid on homes in the normally fervent spring market, real estate brokers say.

The dream of ever owning a home is looking bleak for a majority of Canadians shut out of the housing market, according to new polling from Ipsos.

owning a home. But after years of looking to buy something that would be suitable for the family they hope to start in Vancouver, they’ve quit searching.“We’ve seen the bidding wars and houses selling way over asking price.

What you can buy in housing markets across Canada for $500K, $1M and $1.5M National statistics show the average national home price is now more than seven times the average household income, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association and Statistics Canada.The average home price isn’t a perfect measure of what homebuyers are facing in the real world, as the metric can be swayed by variations in types of homes sold in a given period.

home prices reach the stratosphere, calls on the government to bring the housing market back to Earth — possibly with a soft landing — are growing increasingly urgent.Some of Canada’s big banks have recently joined the chorus.“Overheated markets threaten to destabilize the economy down the road if or when a correction occurs, with possible heavy costs for governments,” Robert Hogue at RBC Economics has warned in a note to clients.

Behold, the Canadian condo market joins the COVID-19 real estate frenzy The national average sale price of a home in Canada was up a whopping 25 per cent in February compared to the same month in 2020, just before the start of the COVID-19 health emergency, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).And sales activity last month was strong across the country, including in places like Calgary, which had its best February since 2014, before the oil-market crash.No matter where you live in Canada, if you are hoping to buy in the upcoming spring housing market, “be prepared for bidding wars,” says Romana King, director of content at Zolo, an online real estate marketplace.Buyers should come prepared, King adds.“Know (the

economy during the novel coronavirus pandemic.While feelings of loneliness and isolation are common amid shutdowns and social distancing, there’s a growing divide between those who have emerged from the economic slump in fine — or even better — shape and those who have landed in a financial dark pit.When it comes to jobs, debt and housing, Canada’s economic trajectory has split into two, data shows.

CREA) said on Thursday.The industry group said actual sales, not seasonally adjusted, rose 45.6% from a year earlier, while the group’s Home Price Index was up 10.3% from September last year and up 1.3% from August.“This is starting to sound like a broken record (about records being broken), but Canadian home sales and prices set records once again in September … as they did in July and August,” said Shaun Cathcart, senior economist at CREA, in a statement.The largest price gains were in smaller Ontario cities and in the capital region of Ottawa, with further flung Toronto suburbs and Ontario cottage towns also showing very strong year-over-year gains.This reinforces the view that Canadians are fleeing the tight confines of urban centers

By the end of the second quarter relatively few people were defaulting on their mortgages, although CMHC says it is expecting an increase in delinquent mortgages as deferral programs come to an end this fall.CMHC says that it also expects fewer Canadians to get ahead on their mortgage payments this year, compared with 2019, a trend that will add to the national level of mortgage debt by the end of this year.After interest rates were cut this year, variable rate mortgages gained popularity in April and May of this year, according to CMHC.CMHC says that as of April, 20 per cent of consumers surveyed said they were mulling moving their mortgages to a different lender — depending on how the lender accommodated them during the COVID-19 pandemic.

TORONTO – The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board says home sales were down 69 per cent in the first 17 days of April compared with a year ago as the COVID-19 outbreak put a chill on market activity.