Buyer’s market persists as CREA slashes sales forecast
Reaza Ali (pictured top), national business development manager at Heartwood Financial Group, emphasized in a recent interview with Canadian Mortgage Professional that focusing too strongly on the national figures might not be the right approach for mortgage professionals in regional markets.
“There are segments in the Canadian lending landscape and the Canadian real estate market that are still fairly active,” he said. He sees a “fairly liquid and moving” outlook at present for smaller markets, but doesn’t expect a huge upswing in Ontario and British Columbia – provinces where high values and rising interest rates have cooled purchase activity in recent years.
Sliding prices have presented challenges for some homeowners whose mortgages are coming up for renewal, but they’ve also created improved buying conditions for would-be purchasers who previously found themselves frozen out of the market.
“The nice thing is I would say where the values have now come to, there is more opportunity,” Ali said. “We’ve heard headlines about more activity on sales. But on the flipside, you would assume that the values have gone up with that – and they quite frankly have not. They have not, in any significant way. So to me, it’s still a buyer’s market.”
Buyers gaining the upper hand on price
The Bank of Canada has stayed on the sidelines so far this year, opting to hold interest rates unchanged once again on Wednesday (July 15) and giving no indication that it’s prepared to cut between now and the end of 2026.
