If David Wallach, President and CEO of Barclay Street Real Estate, had been asked a year ago what the state of Calgary’s real estate industry was, his response wouldn’t have been far off from doom and gloom.

But one year on, the prospects for Calgary’s markets in commercial sectors like retail, industrial, and even downtown offices are looking up.

That, he said, is a blessing for everyone in the province.

Wallach, along with 85 other brokers and real estate professionals gathered for the TCN Worldwide Fall Conference in Calgary, which brought together some of the top independent real estate firms internationally from locales like Texas, Mexico, and Romania among others

The Greater Toronto Area‘s (GTA) housing crisis is intensifying, with new data revealing that high municipal fees and prolonged approval processes are driving up the cost of new homes.

The latest Municipal Benchmarking Study from the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), developed by Altus Group Economic Consulting, warns that the region’s housing supply is lagging dangerously behind population growth, signalling an impending crisis if immediate action isn’t taken.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve on Wednesday enacted its first interest rate cut since the early days of the Covid pandemic, slicing half a percentage point off benchmark rates in an effort to head off a slowdown in the labor market.

With both the jobs picture and inflation softening, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee chose to lower its key overnight borrowing rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, affirming market expectations that had recently shifted from an outlook for a cut half that size.

After an “all time low” month for GTA new home sales in July, sales fell to new depths in August, posting a mere 464 transactions — a new”historical low,” according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).

“August’s new home sales data paints a stark picture of a housing market that is struggling with deep structural issues that have made the cost to build too high,” says Justin Sherwood, SVP Communications & Stakeholder Relations at BILD. “A key component of those costs are the excessively high government taxes and fees, which add, on average, $355,000 to the cost of an average single family new home in the GTA.”

The recent lower mortgage rate environment has yet to revive Canada’s slumping housing market, a new report has found.

RBC Economics published a report this month examining the impact of two rate cuts by the Bank of Canada, concluding the decreases have failed to spur activity in most major Canadian real estate resale markets.

The Bank of Canada cut rates 25 basis points in June and again in July, but through the summer most markets did not see an increase in sales activity, though new listings did rise. Calgary led major cities in sales declines in August on a percentage basis. Sales fell nearly 20 per cent year over year. At the same time, new listings increased 13 per cent year over year in Calgary, also the highest among the six urban markets in the study. Vancouver saw the next largest decline in sales at 17 per cent while new listings there grew about four per cent.

Mortgage rates are falling like presidential election hopes after a debate disaster. Indeed, fixed rates have dipped in nine of the 10 terms we monitor, with most shedding at least 10 basis points.

Why the lender generosity? Simply put, their costs to fund mortgages have nosedived to multi-month lows. Lender profit margins are now pleasantly plump — enough so to share the savings with Joe and Jane Borrower.

Canada has a productivity problem, and according to head economists at TD “there is one sector in Canada that wears the Scarlet Letter more prominently than the others: construction.”

The report, bluntly titled From Bad to Worse: Canada’s Productivity Slowdown is Everyone’s Problem, explores how growth has declined in almost every sector since the pandemic, from manufacturing, to oil and gas, to the service industry. “The woes are widespread,” says the report, but they make it very clear that the construction sector is the main culprit, namely the residential segment.

Finding affordable housing continues to be a growing problem in many communities across Canada — including in southwestern Ontario.

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is moving ahead with what it calls transitional cabins to try and help the issue of homelessness by putting solid roofs over more heads. 

Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.   

Girouard is a well-known broker who previously appeared on a Quebec reality show that follows top real-estate agents in the province. She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.