We’re still seeing slow sales in the Calgary Real Estate market. There is a lot of talk that the mortgage stress test, and to a lesser extent rates, are to blame for the slow spring markets right across Canada. Some say the warming was due, and some stay it’s still on it’s way.
This Buzz News article has some insights into the original forecast and what they think will happen next. Scotiabank senior economist Marc Desormeaux is predicting that a recovery is still on the way, just later in the year. “An early-year slowdown in Canadian housing market activity persists in the wake of rising interest rates and mortgage stress tests that came into effect on Jan. 1st,” he writes, in a recent note, before predicting a “modest recovery…later in 2018.”
So is now the time to invest? According to TD economist Rishi Sondhi, it sounds like it is. “Going forward, we expect activity to find support and begin to recover very gradually in the second half of the year,” he writes. “While rising borrowing costs will weigh on activity and prices, the housing market should nonetheless improve, supported by low unemployment, rising wages, and healthy population growth.”
If analysts are right – and their accuracy is about that of the weatherman – now’s the time to invest and hold!
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