Quote:
Originally Posted by maxtower
Canadian housing never went down during the last recession in 2008 ?
How did they pull that off? How do people afford housing in Vancouver or Toronto? Is it comparable to San Francisco ?
prices didn't go down but volume went way down. so i would say in a real world sense prices did go down. but the credit crisis recovery happened soon enough that the price index never went down.
canada was/is also pretty responsible as per banking and mortgages. so not much sub-prime here either. that really helped.
crazy canadian housing markets are basically vancouver and toronto. most other places have similarity to different usa markets.
vancouver = beautiful city (horrible rain), 30 million rich chinese want to move here. severely land constrained as the city is surrounded by mountains, quasi-ocean. only temperate climate in canada - victoria bc too.... so all kinds of demand to live here but very very little real estate available.... so tons and tons of condo development. real estate prices here seem to go up 10%-15% per year forever.... we sold a house for $300k 30 years ago. $7.5MM today.
toronto = big financial hub city for canada. harder to figure out why its real estate market is so crazy. seen suggestion some prices are up 40%+ in a year or so. that NEVER happened in crazy R/E vancouver.... suspicious that it started when BC did its non-resident real estate tax.. toronto also has lots of recent china immigrants. i use the word china as the immigrants are actually from china, not generally hong kong.. tons and tons of condo's in toronto too.
i hate to keep mentioning so many condo's in toronto/vancouver but it is simply incredible how many there are and how many being built near me...... vancouver also has huge numbers of small old houses torn down and big new house put up. my friend from winnipeg (think canada's wichita or omaha) had never seen that.