By Dominic St-Pierre, Senior Director, Royal LePage, Quebec region This blog articles is the first of a new series on Quebec market. Montreal is world renowned as a unique city, rated as a category in its own right for its beauty, culture and character. And yet, upon taking a closer look at the demographics, its…
Interest rates are arguably one of the most important predictors of the direction of the housing market. Together, the two share an inverse relationship: when rates go up, housing activity almost always goes down. That is why the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) recent decision to leave unchanged the way that they target interest rates is…
Canadian interest rates are low – but could they go even lower? Could we reach a point where we have negative interest rates – whatever those are exactly? That has been the question since the concept of ‘negative rates’ hit mainstream conversations last year. Negative rates have since been adopted by some countries and there…
Canada’s recent housing market strength is impressive and to some, feels ominous with assumptions that it is reaching a pinnacle that will lead to a fall. But with a narrow view restrained to our borders it is hard to understand how our market fares in a bigger global picture. On an international scale, the growth…
The Bank of Canada has cut Canadian interest rates twice over the past year and may well cut them again. In contrast, the U.S. Federal Reserve has raised rates once and odds are that they will do so again in March. How did this happen? How is it that Canadian and U.S. rates are on…
Did you move into a new home this year? You would have a lot of company if you did. Spurred by low interest rates and a desire to be homeowners, Canadians have been buying homes at a brisk pace at the end of 2015. In many cases, they also have the excitement of being first-time…
Appropriate. That is how the Bank of Canada (BOC) judges the current level of interest rates in Canada, and it is how we judge them as well. In its latest pronouncement on monetary policy, the BOC left its benchmark ‘overnight’ rate at 0.5 percent, and in its accompanying statement gave a cautious but mostly positive…
In our quest to understand Canada’s economy and its housing market, we monitor many different statistics and indicators. Beyond interest rates, the one factor we believe is most closely correlated to housing market strength is full-time employment. With that in mind, we took a good look at how full-time jobs have changed this year across…
Canada’s housing industry is more important than ever as a driver of the Canadian economy, and luckily it is on solid footing. Those are two conclusions we reached here at Royal LePage, after taking a good look at the data contained in the National Balance Sheet Accounts recently released by Statistics Canada. The National Balance…
In the face of renewed economic turmoil around the world, Canada’s housing market continues to perform well. To what should we attribute this sustained strength? Low interest rates? Growth in full-time employment? Foreign investment? Yes to all, but how about demographics? Canada’s population is now aged ‘just right’ to be homebuyers. Even if interest rates…