Is the Canadian Housing Market in a Bubble?

It sure looks that way.

- A David A. Rosenberg, Chief Economist & Strategist SPECIAL REPORT

At a time when personal income is down around 1% over the past year, we have seen nationwide average home prices soar over 20% and last month hit a record high; as did home sales. In real terms, home price appreciation is back to where it was in 1989. Of course, back then, interest rates were far higher but then again, the economy was in the late stages of a phenomenal multi-year economic expansion, not making a transition from deep recession to nascent recovery.

We are in no position to make a claim that there is a high degree of speculation in residential real estate as there was during the “flipping” mania of the late 1980s. Be that as it may, housing has become a very crowded asset class in Canada, as measured by the homeownership rate, which at last count was estimated at 68.4% which is not only a full percentage point higher than the current U.S. ratio but is the highest it has been on this side of the border in nearly four decades.

While the Canadian economy is recovering, overall growth is still barely above zero as manufacturers grappled with excess inventories, a strong currency and a soft domestic demand picture south of the border. Employment conditions have improved, but are hardly that healthy, as we saw in the latest jobs report for November, where wages and the workweek were both down despite a constructive headline number (half of which were in the education sector, an inherently difficult area for statisticians to adequately seasonally adjust).

The bottom line is that even though home prices did come off a soft base from a year ago, so did most other economic indicators and they are still down from the depressed levels prevailing this time in 2008:

• Real GDP -3.2%

• Employment -1.5%

• Retail sales -3.3%

• Shipments -18.6%

• Orders -18.4%

• Exports -18.2%

• Personal income -0.8%

• But home prices are up 22%.

Go figure.



Saverio Manzo