Canada’s housing market summer outlook

So high interest rates have kept Canada's housing market pretty cool in recent years, fair to say. But with the Bank of Canada now set to cut rates, many are hoping of course for a rebound as we head into the summer months. So to get a sense of what we can expect now real estate trends could impact you both as a buyer and seller, I want to bring in Anya Edinger, a realtor. Anya, great to see you. We appreciate you joining us. Welcome. Welcome back. My pleasure. Thanks for having me again. All right. So it's been, let's you know, let's call it like it is, been a pretty rough couple of years at least for both buyers, sellers and of course real estate agents. Is it fair to say that now there's you know, some silver lining on the horizon? I think it depends on who you ask and where you are because across Canada we have so many different markets and even within certain cities, I'm in Toronto and Toronto, certain neighborhoods and pockets will behave very differently than the rest. So some relief could be expected, yes, over the summer. I mean summer historically is a slower month in real estate, so to expect things to slow down a little bit is definitely fair. But now we've got that potential Bank of Canada rate cut in June to play around with. Well, is that going to surge demand and get buyers into the market despite some are usually being slower or are people going to wait until the fall or wait until they're ready? But it's interesting because we have seen a lot of people just sit on the sidelines for quite some time, even when in the spring market. It's supposed to be, you know, fair to say, pretty hot for a lot of people. The listings have gone up, not significantly, but they have gone up a little bit. But a lot of people are still holding off, aren't they? They are. We saw a real big surge in demand closer to the beginning of the spring market early February into early March that we were really seeing huge bidding wars, 1520 offers on properties, there was one property that got like 85 offers. So demand was quite strong at the start of the spring market. But as inventory has been increasing and we've been seeing more and more listings, which again not uncommon for the spring because there's this, you know, mentality of sellers that spring is the best time to list and to sell. So with that, you know, kind of uptick in inventory and new listings, it's kind of tapered off the ratio between buyers and sellers and supply and demand. But it's also interesting because look, I mean let's clear the air in many ways you have a vested interest in this in the market doing well. But what we love having about you, you know, having you on the show is that you call it like it is on your Instagram, especially you you poll the market because of the ups and downs and there's so many in betweens of course. What do you tell your clients right now, especially at this time, I'm very hyper focused with my clients on what specifically they're looking for. So if I have a client who's looking for a starter home in you know, the East End of Toronto, we are still seeing quite a bit of demand and bidding wars in that category. But if I have a client looking for a condo, then we have a lot more, you know, there's a lot more focus on leverage that they have. You have you know time to kind of think, I had a client recently who we saw condo three times before she put in an offer and there was no question of whether or not someone's going to come in and sweep it up before she's ready. We had the time, we had the ability to put in conditions. So we are really, I'm really forced to to be very focused and have my, you know, finger on the pulse of each specific market my clients are dealing in. I think any, you know, buyers and sellers across Canada should be talking to their Realtors and you know, looking into what is happening in my area in the type of products that I'm looking to buy or sell, OK. So a lot of people consider this to be in some ways at least moving towards a buyer's market because the prices have stabilised. Even the real estate association saying this is you know finally we're having some balance in the marketplace. However, as you know in so many cities across the country, the big ones especially Toronto, Vancouver, but even some of the smaller ones Halifax, buying a home is out of reach. It's, it's very, very difficult and I'm looking towards you know the next few months if the the rates are cut then what's going to happen because now you just don't have as many homes in the market overall and you wonder supply and demand prices could still be very high, could they not, Yeah, they could. I mean the, the difficult thing with where we've gotten now in terms of prices is that we would need something like a 2 to 300% decrease in prices for homes to be considered more affordable. A 10/15/20 percent dip is not going to really, you know, put a dent in it. So it's still it. It's a very tricky conversation because it's still not affordable. And even if you know, we saw prices drop 20% from the peak to, you know, once interest rates started started dropping or sorry, going up, that didn't make houses any more affordable because now the monthly carrying costs have gone up. It's going to be fasting because right now the market, what the mortgage rates is, what fixed rate is more than 5%. So it's going to have to go down quite a bit to make it, to make it really at least palatable for a lot of people, is it not? Yeah, but we definitely, we're seeing, you know, we've gotten so used to seeing a seller's market in Canada that that's become the normal. And you know over the last 1020 years that generally we've been in a seller's market, especially in most of the major cities. Now we're finally starting to see a buyer's market creep in and we're finally starting to see buyers actually having some leverage and some ability to negotiate and to take their time to do their due diligence, which I think is really good for the general market because we don't want people rushing in. And you know, when we were in February of 2022 and people were buying things sight unseen and waving all sorts of conditions, It's not great for the whole, you know, the market as a whole because what happens if something's wrong down the line and they need to, you know, can hurt the seller, can hurt the buyer. At least this way, we've got a little bit more balance for both sides. All right. We always appreciate your insight. Thank you so much, Anya. That is Anya Endger, a Realtor. And I mentioned your Instagram. It's ASE Realty. Am I correct? That's correct, yes. Great Great content on there. Thank you again, Anya. Thank you for having me.