Canada’s soaring home sales may reach their highpoint in 2021. From there, numbers could start to dip.
The Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation projects that as many as 602,000 homes could be sold this year, up from 550,000 last year, according to Bloomberg.
The government agency expects the number of sales will slide next year to about 547,000, before ticking back up to 561,100 in 2023. Pricing is expected to climb throughout that period and could reach up to $578,000, about 704,000 in Canadian dollars.
Some economists are concerned that Canada’s housing market is well on its way to bubble territory. Overall pricing hit record highs last year and some markets saw prices shoot up more than 30 percent in 2020.
Like the U.S. market, the Canadian housing market frenzy is being fueled in part by high demand built up during pandemic-related pauses in business as well as near-record low mortgage rates since summer.
Canada’s financial system exposure to the mortgage market is twice that of the U.S. however, which means any downturn could be devastating for the country’s economy.
[Bloomberg] — Dennis Lynch