- Detached homes 47.2% fewer sales & HPI benchmark price up 1.6% from Oct. 2021.
- Apartments – 44.8% fewer sales – & HPI benchmark price up 5.1%
- Attached (twnhse & duplexes) – 44.8% fewer sales & HPI benchmark price up 7.1%
- The number of active listings are up 22.6% from Oct 2021
- Current 5 year fixed ‘posted rate’ is 6.34% – but buyers must ‘qualify’ for a mortgage at 8.34%. The best discounted rate is 5.14%
- The next Bank of Canada (BoC) meeting is December 7th – which may be another .5% hike. Here is the history of the BoC’s rate hikes this year;
- January 26 – no change. Inflation at 5.1%
- March 2 + .25 %
- April 13 + .50 %
- June 1 + .50 %
- July 13 + 1.00 %
- September 7 + .75 % inflation at 6.9%. (in BC it was 7.7%)
- October 26 + .50 %. Inflation rate to be released November 16
The Bank of Canada’s Overnight rate sits at 3.75% – (it was .25% in January 2022). 3.75% is well above the bank’s estimate of the neutral rate (2 – 3.00%).
According to economists that means monetary policy is no longer working, and the results speak for themselves – a 93% increase in the bank rate from January to November has resulted in an inflation rate that went from 5.1% (January) to 6.9% today.
Clearly, with no brakes on government spending plus supply chain disruptions, interest rate changes are having no effect.
Hopefully the Canadian government is not following the IMF managing director’s advice that “central banks should continue to raise rates…. & … it would take until 2024 for the positive effect of central banks raising rates globally to be felt.”
If your mortgage is coming due in 2023 consider getting a 120 day rate guarantee now as well as checking out how much your early payout penalty would be.
The good news?
September’s CPI numbers suggest that inflation may be slowing, despite certain areas such as food prices purchased from stores (+11.4 %) growing at the fastest pace since Aug. 1981.
Average hourly wages were up 5.2 % from this time last year – but still well below inflation.
The second lowest unemployment rate in Canada was BC at 4.3% .
Housing starts were up by 8.8k in Vancouver and 1.3k in Abbotsford, but were down by 4.5k in Kelowna and 1.2k in Victoria. The 6-month moving average trend rose 7.7 % to 50,500 housing starts in BC.