Canadians are breathing a sigh of relief as the Bank of Canada announced today that rates are staying put at the current 5% overnight lending rate. This announcement follows three rate hikes so far in 2023 and the September announcement to hold rates.
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Are Rate Hikes Officially Done for 2023?
Canada’s annual inflation rate fell to 3.8% in September according to Statistics Canada. This was a welcome surprise as previous predictions suggested that inflation will likely remain around 4%. However, the Bank of Canada has made it clear that even with inflation trending positively, a rate hike is never off the table. “Forecasting has been notably difficult for the Bank over the last 12 months, given there is still a lot of volatility in the economy,” explains James Laird, Co-CEO of Ratehub.ca and President of CanWise mortgage lender.
The Goal to Slow Spending Has Worked, Especially in Real Estate
The high overnight lending rate has impacted the spending of Canadians from coast to coast and has changed real estate plans for many. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), national home sales were down 1.9% from August, marking the third straight month in a row of a decrease. Sales plunged in every major market from August, with Ontario cities especially seeing a drop. Hamilton-Burlington experienced a month-over-month drop in sales of 20.3%, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) experienced a 12.3% drop, and Ottawa experienced a 7.8% drop. Greater Vancouver was also down with sales declining by 16.3% from August.
In a recent survey of more than 1,600 Zoocasa readers, 23.3% of respondents agreed that the pause to interest rate hikes had a positive impact on their interest in the real estate market while 16.1% strongly disagreed that the pause had a positive impact. This suggests that the cost of borrowing is still too high for Canadians and it’s going to take more than just another rate hold to get homebuyers off the sidelines.
However, this real estate market slowdown is allowing for inventory to rebuild in many major markets. Inventory has been historically low for months now, but with fewer active buyers new listings in Canada were up by 12.6% month-over-month in September according to CREA and up 14.2% from last year. Ontario benefitted the most from an increase in new listings, with Kitchener-Waterloo, the GTA, Niagara Region and Hamilton-Burlington all experiencing year-over-year increases of more than 14%. Months of inventory are also inching upwards nationally, rising from 3.5 months in August to 3.6 months in September.
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