Experts say housing market is heading for ‘pain’, so what can buyers and sellers expect in this environment?

Experts believe house prices will continue to fall

However, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem is unfazed by the lower house prices. Macklem said that the central bank may even increase its benchmark interest rate to 3%, or more, to control inflation if required.

Macklem’s announcement comes after economist Stephen Brown announced on June 7 that any further “aggressive approach to policy tightening than is ultimately required” could “sharply lower” housing prices and risk a “major recession.”

“We forecast a 10% correction based on the Bank of Canada hiking its policy rate to 2.5%. If the bank hikes further than that – which looks increasingly likely – then the price decline could be in the region of 15% to 20%,” Brown said.

For Ron Butler, a mortgage broker at Butler Mortgage, Brown’s report “undershoots how bad it's gonna get.”

“They're talking about a 15% reduction in prices. We're thinking 25% up to 30% across Canada,” Butler said.

“Some regions have already gone down 30%,” Butler said, citing “ north Brampton is down 30%, parts of Durham and parts of Vaughan are down 30%.”

Empower your investments with Qtrade

Discover Qtrade's award-winning platform and take control of your financial future. With user-friendly tools, expert insights, and low fees, investing has never been easier.

Start Trading Today

Who are the buyers and sellers right now?

When asked who are the buyers and who are the sellers right now, Butler said, “The problem right now is we don't have any buyers.”

“People are looking at the extreme increase in mortgage rates, which has more than doubled in 10 months. And they're saying ‘we're gonna wait.’”

“When people start to investigate buying a home, they do some research, and they quickly find out that the prices are now falling. So no one wants to buy a house, if they think they can wait, it'll be $100,000 less than a few months.”

For Brown, he can’t can’t answer on who is selling, except for those who are forced to do so.

What about investment properties?

But for investors, it would probably “feel like the right time to sell given that the Bank of Canada intends to continue rapidly raising interest rates.”

“If prices start to fall sharply, then that is when we’ll start getting worried about people being forced to sell,” he added.

“We are not seeing people sell due to changes in their variable rate mortgage, that is unlikely to cause homeowners to sell,” he said. “The higher mortgage payments might lead some highly leveraged investors to sell.”

Whether investors are going to see profits if they are selling now entirely depends on the area where they purchased.

“If they purchased in some of the areas where there's been very little price change, which is basically central 416, basically Toronto proper, parts of Peel, that there has not been really any specific change,” said Butler in reference to the Greater Toronto Area real estate market.

“And again, it depends what they paid for it when they bought it,” he reiterated.

In early June, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board said that May home sales dropped 39 per cent from a year earlier and prices rose almost 10 per cent.

Greater Vancouver home sales also slipped to a 32 per cent drop year-over-year in sales, according to data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Overall, home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems dropped by 8.6% between April and May 2022, accoding to a June 15 report by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Unexpected vet bills don’t have to break the bank

Life with pets is unpredictable, but there are ways to prepare for the unexpected.

Fetch Insurance offers coverage for treatment of accidents, illnesses, prescriptions drugs, emergency care and more.

Plus, their optional wellness plan covers things like routine vet trips, grooming and training costs, if you want to give your pet the all-star treatment while you protect your bank account.

Get A Quote

Who’s been hit hardest by the price drops

According to the CREA, the more sizable price declines were observed in the country’s hottest markets, which are southern Ontario and Chilliwack, B.C.

Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist, described the “slowdown to more normal levels of sales activity and a flattening out of prices” as “expected.”

However, for Cathcart, the surprising part was, “how fast we got here.”

“With the now very steep expected pace of Bank of Canada rate hikes, and fixed mortgage rates getting way out in front of those, instead of playing out steadily over two years, that cooling off of sales and prices seems to have mostly played out over the last two months,” added Cathcart.

Amid rising mortgage prices, “it is a profound affordability problem,” Butler elaborated.

He sees this problem especially with Canadians who have opted to choose alternative lenders, mainly due to lower credit scores, or self-employed status that makes it harder to prove income.

This segment of the population had a one-year mortgage at 2.89% rate, but now they are going to face a new renewal rate at 5.89% to 6.19%, he said.

“It is huge,” Butler exclaimed. “That’s basically more than double. And that means your payment would increase approximately 52%,” he added.

Economic situation will negatively affect everyone

For Butler, he summarized his prediction in one word, “pain.”

“Pain for people who have a mortgage, pain for people who are actually caught in a buying process, they bought a home and now they're having difficulty closing on the sale, or getting their own existing home sold,” he said.

“So there's a lot of pain in the marketplace right now.”

Butler also said that the big changes are going to be felt later in the year, “because not everybody renews immediately.”

“The people who are going to be the most affected are going to be renewing in the fall. And the people who have big key locks[new homeowners) are only starting to feel the pain, because they're gonna feel more pain by the fall,” he said.

“A recession by 2023 is guaranteed. 100% guaranteed.”