Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney sounded more alarm bells last week. It was a warning about the perfect storm of rapidly rising home prices and the future vulnerabilities of homeowners when interest rates start rising.
Fittingly, Carney was speaking in Vancouver, where home prices are up a whopping 25.7% year-over-year—if you include the sales of high-end homes.
Carney noted that the average house price nationally is at four-and-a-half times the average household disposable income. This compares to an average ratio of three-and-a-half times during the past quarter century, he said. Here’s a Chart. (Mortgage affordability, however, is still just slightly above normal, based on long-term averages, but that is based on current interest rates.)
While he didn’t come out and call Canada’s housing market a “bubble,” he certainly warned about the current level of “financial vulnerabilities.”
“…the ratio between the all-in monthly costs of owning a home and renting a home, as measured in the CPI, is close to its highest level since these series were first kept in 1949,” he said. As a result, “the proportion of Canadian households that would be highly vulnerable to an adverse economic shock has risen to its highest level in nine years, despite improving economic conditions and the ongoing low level of interest rates.”
Other points Carney raised during his speech:
- An ample supply of housing development and high investor demand reinforces the possibility of an “overshoot” in the condo market in some major cities
- “Cheap credit has been used to bid up the price of Canadian houses”
- Residential investment as a whole (including new home construction, renovations and ownership transfer costs) has “consistently exceeded its long-term average share of the overall economic activity for more than seven years”
- Residential investment “is now at levels that have previously proved to be peaks in Canada and, on a relative basis, in the United States,” he said. (Chart)
Steve Huebl, CMT
Last modified: January 4, 2022
Mark Carney’s Warning is like saying the Titanic sank. Yes it has…a long time ago!
Cheap money does that to bubbles like real estate…as icebergs to ships.
I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Nothing has sunk yet.
Carney just warns people, but most of the blame should be laid to him and the BOC for having such low rates and keeping them there for so long. Their mandate is for inflation control to below 2% but also to manage money supply and employment effects, economy etc. However the “easy” money has allowed far too much speculation in the real estate market and now all he can do is warn people. Look at the debt levels at people now $1.5 trillion!
I often wonder how ‘blanket’ statements like this gain credibility. Yes, Vancouver is smoking hot; a good friend of mine manages a brokerage with 300 Realtors and he said its nuts. However, I live in a small town on southern Vancouver Island and our month over month average single family home prices are down according to our board stats. And the reality is….our sales are not like Vancouver, not even close. Policies to cool the hot city markets will also have a definable impact on the smaller markets. Too bad there wasn’t a way to tailor the policy to the areas where its needed instead of making broad stroke changes that potentially hurt small town Canada.
While they certainly look at a number of things, the BoC has a mandate to do one thing and one thing only: control inflation. It’s not really accurate to say they have a mandate to support employment.