Canada's Housing Bubble

Sep 15, 2010 Ben Rabidoux financialinsights.wordpress.com

Check out the title of the following stories:

Home sales rise for the first time since March

Home sales up in August

Home resales rise

Wow!  Sunshine and lollipops!  Bidding wars around the corner!

Not quite.  What we have here is a classic sleight of hand.  The headline looks rosy, but what they’re reporting on is the month-over-month data.  That’s unusual as most reports from CREA (Canadian Real Estate Association) emphasize year-over-year data.  What’s up with that?

Interesting that CREA itself would neglect to mention  year-over-year comparison, given that sales volume in all the big centres were off between 20 and 40% year-over-year in August.  Of course, that doesn’t make nearly as exciting a headline.

However, the price trend is strengthening to the downward, now having fallen 6.3% nationally since May (hey….if we counted closing costs associated with selling, wouldn’t that wipe out the average new homeowner’s equity, which was estimated by CMHC to be a a paltry 7%?).

And to think that I’m foolishly throwing my money away by renting a beautiful home at a fraction of the cost of ownership while growing the assets in my portfolio!  What a dunce!

Cheers

Ben