The Canadian Investor - City-by-City Breakdown of Canada’s Housing Market in 2025

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

In this episode, we take a macro-to-micro look at Canada’s real estate market amid rising tariffs, elevated interest rates, and a historic federal election where 85% of Canadians voted for simil...ar housing platforms.  We break down the national economic picture, including GDP by province and the impact of U.S. tariffs on construction and affordability. Then, we go region by region—from B.C. and Alberta to Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes—to assess local real estate dynamics and rental trends. We also share actionable strategies for home buyers and investors navigating today’s volatility, and outline where we see opportunity over the next 2–3 years. Whether you're eyeing growth in Calgary or cash flow in Montreal, this episode will help you cut through the noise and make data-driven decisions. Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Finchat.io for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:01:13 This is the Canadian investor where you take control of your own portfolio and gain the confidence you need to succeed in the markets. Hosted by Brayden Dennis and Simon Bélanger. Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. I'm here for a special episode with the one and only Dan Foch. Dan, how are you today?
Starting point is 00:01:35 We're gonna be going over some Canadian real estate. So you've been on the podcast before, but I think it'll be a bit different this time around, just looking at it via different cities, different metro areas across Canada. Yeah, I'm good. My name is Daniel Foch. I'm host of the other Canadian Investor Show, the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast. I'm also a real estate broker and co-owner and chief real estate officer at a real estate
Starting point is 00:02:02 brokerage. So pretty in touch with what's going on. And I would agree. I think that this is, it's different, but it's also a dynamic time for Canadian real estate because things vary so much on a province by province basis. You've got some markets where unemployment is really high and unaffordability is still really high and they're suffering, namely Ontario. And then you've got, well, Ontario and BC or maybe like the lower mainland. And then you've got Ontario and BC or maybe
Starting point is 00:02:25 like the lower mainland. And then you've got other markets that are doing totally fine. And it seems to be, fortunately or unfortunately, that Ontario data really takes a big piece of the national data and it skews it in the wrong direction. And so it's hard to get an idea for what the true story is, right? So we're gonna do a little bit of an overview of the national stats and then we're also gonna kind of think about a couple of ways that investors can look at this based on some recent reports that came out from RBC in Deloitte where, you know, I mean, there's – we've gotten through the election. The next kind of big question mark in Canada's economy is what's our exposure from a trade war perspective? I think you and I are going to, because you understand
Starting point is 00:03:09 the industry is a lot better, but I understand sort of the real estate side. We're going to kind of riff on that a little bit, I think. No, I think it'll be fun and thank you for introducing yourself. Sometimes I just assume that people know you because you've been on this show a few times. You did what I did not do so well as a host so thank you for that. No I totally agree with you and on the Ontario part living in Ottawa I get that sense quite a bit because obviously people talk about Ontario and it's just assumed that it's basically Ontario excluding Ottawa when people talk about Ontario for the most part. It just seems like Ottawa It's a its own little bubble, but it's always the sense I get is when we talk about Ontario
Starting point is 00:03:50 It's really more that GTA area right the southern Ontario type of area Yeah, the what do they call it the center of the universe or downtown, Canada? Yeah, that's funny or the Toronto Sports Network. I think for sports, right? you know, it is funny because we serve a national audience, both of us, and the more investible markets in Canada from a real estate perspective are outside of the GTA. So we get a lot of, not complaints, but you get criticism for the data really forcing you to think a lot about Toronto just because it's the only place where we have the office market index or things like that. It's really the only market that has that size and stature. So a lot of the data comes from Toronto or the GTA, but it ends up being wrong or very not applicable to the rest of the country.
Starting point is 00:04:36 So yeah, I mean, maybe the best place to start is thinking about house prices, which is probably the biggest thing what people think about. So if you look at residential average price, the Canadian Real Estate Association puts this out. And this is a really easy way to kind of visualize the skew that Ontario and BC has on the national average. So if you go province by province, every single province is up on a year over year basis in house prices from March 2024 to March 2025 except for Ontario and BC. Yet, Ontario and BC takes up so much of the volume that they skew the average down.
Starting point is 00:05:10 So national house prices are down 4% year over year. Yet in BC, they're down, let's say 5%. In Ontario, they're down 4%. Alberta is up 6%. Saskatchewan is up 11%. Manitoba is up 10%. Quebec is up 7%. New Brunswick is up 6%, Nova Scotia is up 6%, PEI is up 12% and Newfoundland is up almost 20%, between 15 and 20%.
Starting point is 00:05:34 And so it really shows you how that center of the universe Toronto thing happens in the data side of things. And are they still, I know in terms of household income to home prices ratio, Toronto and Vancouver were always near the top or are they still near the top despite those declines? Yeah, they are because house prices had gone so far out of control that they still need to come back really, really far. Calgary has passed Montreal. So if you're looking at your big four cities, and I'll pull up one of the really good reports that I use to look at this is the National Bank Housing Affordability Monitor, where they look at housing affordability.
Starting point is 00:06:19 They chart it across all the different cities in Canada. They leave out a couple of ones that I think really should be in there. But yeah, Toronto and Vancouver are by and large severely unaffordable compared to the remainder of the country. No, that's really interesting. I mean, and what like in terms of what do you expect in terms of growth for the next couple of years? Do you think it'll be really dependent on the economy,
Starting point is 00:06:44 the trade war? Is that going to be the leading factor or do you think it's going to be offset to some extent by potentially lower interest rates, whether we're talking variable rates because of lowering rates from the Bank of Canada or whether we're talking about potentially lower bond yield? But that's your guess is as good as mine when it comes to that because who knows what the bond market will do? Yeah. It's a really good question, especially with the amount of spending that was proposed by all parties coming out of the Canadian election. I think it's hard to imagine a world in which bonds are coming down meaningfully without a recession in Canada, which I'm of the
Starting point is 00:07:21 opinion that that's why both parties were proposing so much spending. But to answer your question regarding affordability, I mean, a lot of people overthink affordability. It's really a function of three things, right? So it's a function of incomes, which we saw recent data from the Bank of Canada and the labor force survey that income growth is expected to slow. So wages probably won't be growing. That's usually what you see when we're in a recession or unemployment is rising. But the other pieces are that you have interest rates,
Starting point is 00:07:53 like you mentioned. So interest rates could come down and make housing more affordable because housing affordability is measured. And you can see it here on this chart from the National Bank Housing Affordability Monitor is monthly mortgage payment of a median home price relative to income.
Starting point is 00:08:07 So it's mortgage payment to income. And so incomes could go up, interest rates could come down, or house prices could come down. Those are the three ways that housing affordability can improve. So far, it's kind of been a mix of all of those. If we stop seeing a lot of that growth come from income,
Starting point is 00:08:22 then the central banks or house prices are gonna have to do the remainder. So it's basically the stress test you're showing. Not quite, but that's pretty much the idea behind the stress test, right? They look at your payment and then compare it to your income. Yeah, and that's another thing that is interesting
Starting point is 00:08:38 because OSFIE is actually in the process of, they're halfway through a review of the stress test, and it seems to be that they're alluding that they might go in the direction of actually removing that or rolling it back or shrinking it. So maybe they shrink it from plus 200 basis points to plus 100 basis points. So for those listening who aren't familiar with the stress test, basically right now you have to qualify at either your contract rate plus 2%. So if you go get a mortgage for 4%, which is kind of the market right now, fixed mortgage, you have to qualify at 6% or you have to qualify at 5.25%, whichever is higher.
Starting point is 00:09:16 So that's the MQR minimum qualifying rate. We could see that shrink and that could actually improve buying power. That's probably the biggest stroke of the pen that could improve buying power in the Canadian housing market. And OSFIE is six months into a 12 month study where they're basically using this for... Have you guys talked about it, the 450% portfolio income thing on the show? No, we haven't. And just for a quick clarification to OSFIE, just not to go into too much detail, but they're the regulator for financial institutions. They also regulate pension plans federally just for people that are not familiar. So it's the office of the superintendent financial institutions. Just wanted to clarify that. I know you and I know it quite well, but sometimes people are not
Starting point is 00:09:59 familiar with it. Yeah. So basically, OSFIE, they have this new program where they're making the banks have less than 10% or 15% of their mortgage book can be over 450% loan to income, so over 4.5x income. And then there's an average across their whole portfolio that also needs to be at 450% of income, which isn't hard for banks. If you imagine the average loan to value of a Canadian, like think about all of the people who have had mortgages for 20 years, you know, they're all like 20% loan to value,
Starting point is 00:10:30 10% loan to value, so they skew it down a lot, but they're really trying to get rid of a lot of this riskier behavior that happens during Mayne as like the one that we saw in 2021. Yeah, just don't loan to a GTA and a Greater Vancouver area should be fine. Or just get both of their parents and their grandparents to co-sign on that.
Starting point is 00:10:49 Yeah. For sure. And do you not have reservations with them potentially lowering or removing the stress test? Because to me, there is just alarm bells that go off in my head when I hear that. Because at the end of the day, a lot of people just don't do their own calculations when trying to buy a house and they just look at what they can
Starting point is 00:11:12 be approved for and if this increases what they can be approved for, they will probably go with the best house in terms of bells and whistles that they can get for that amount. I would say that that is true in the core markets, like your Toronto and people typically tend to max out their buying power, yeah, for sure. So I'm of the opinion that yeah, I mean, CMHC's MLI Select program is another really good example. We have a lot of investors who are buying pre-made multiplexes in Alberta as an example,
Starting point is 00:11:43 with 5% down. You know. If you give Canadians a ridiculous opportunity to take on a credit product and a wild amount of leverage and risk and it's associated with real estate and it's insured by the taxpayer, they're going to take that opportunity. What could go wrong, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I share the same sentiment that I think that it's... They have to be careful removing the stress test. The key really becomes where do we feel like there's...
Starting point is 00:12:16 Do we feel like there's more risk to the upside or downside? I mean, Routledge obviously saw this coming and I think he was one of the few people who did where he said, look, rates are crazy low. And this was even before COVID. And honestly, thank God that he did it. Because had he not, all of these COVID people who weren't stress tested would have been blown out. If there was no stress test during COVID, we would be in so much trouble right now. And not to say that we aren't, but I think it definitely softened the impact because he was one of the few people who said If we keep seeing rates trending down
Starting point is 00:12:47 We keep seeing this exuberance as a result of rates trending down people are going to they can't be trusted And we need to we need to test that because they're not like you said they're not doing it themselves And and what else happened in the meantime is the stress test doesn't account for the fact that all of your living expenses went up 20% during period one and then when you have to renew in five years. Maybe you had a vehicle breakdown, you took it on a new truck or whatever, your gas bills double or triple what it was. Insurance costs. Yeah. There are so many things outside of the scope of what they can actually control.
Starting point is 00:13:22 I think it was a really good policy. I think it did its job. So to kind of go back to the beginning of my thought, does OSV fear that there's more downside in rates or more upside in rates? Because if they think that rates are going to continue trending down, then there's really no reason for the stress test to be there. If they think that there's a risk that rates maybe stabilize or jump up in the five-year period. If we end up having everybody getting mortgages at 3% today, refinancing at 5% in five years, then the stress test still would serve a purpose. I think Routledge might communicate his thought on, and he's a brilliant economist. He actually used to work for National Bank. I think he'll communicate his long-term bet
Starting point is 00:14:02 on rates in what they do with that policy. Okay. No, that's a good point. Obviously, I think you know me and listeners know me. I'm always reluctant on too much leverage, whether it's buying a home, whether investing, I never use leverage for investing. I have a mortgage. I understand some leverage can be fine if used reasonably. The problem is I think as Canadians were, even with the recent downturns, I'm sure you'll talk about it a bit more in certain markets. I know the condo market in Toronto, especially those one-bedroom small condos
Starting point is 00:14:35 are really been hit hard, but I think a lot of people are still in the mentality that it's always gonna go up into the right. So I think that's why it's always a bit tricky, especially in Canada, because we haven't seen this big correction like the US saw during the great financial crisis. And I think we kind of think we'll be immune
Starting point is 00:14:54 because we powered through that 2009 to 2011, like relatively unscathed in Canada. So I don't know, I always feel there is that mentality. unscathed in Canada. So I don't know, I always feel there is that mentality. As an investor, I'm always looking to reduce my fees, which is why I'm excited that Questrade now offers zero dollar commissions on stocks and ETFs. But Questrade isn't just about commission free trading.
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Starting point is 00:15:54 TCI listeners, you know that I'm having to constantly travel for work. One week you're up for meetings. Next time in Montreal, meeting potential investors. And while I'm away, my place at home sits empty. So I've been thinking why not put it to use, make some extra income by hosting it on Airbnb. Hosting feels like the smart thing to do, but it can also feel overwhelming to some. But Airbnb's new co-host network makes it a lot easier. I can hire a local vetted co-host to manage everything.
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Starting point is 00:17:22 south? Yeah. So, I guess I'm going to add a couple of thoughts on what you mentioned because I think that the rate path of our 08 GFC was really interesting. So, I mean, we got away with being unscathed during 07, 08 because we could keep our rates lower for longer without them becoming a problem because we were not over levered comparatively then. The problem is the way we grew our economy was people using those rates and us accumulating more leverage.
Starting point is 00:17:52 Today, we are over levered. What you said, all of these things, we didn't get to the highest household debt to GDP ratio in the world without trying and piling on as much debt as we can. Right? Can you remind me who was the Bank of Canada governor back then? You're going to politicize this, of course. Yeah, I mean it was... No, no, I just said this is just a little bit, yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:15 No, it is funny though because I mean it does, the thing could be argued from either direction, right? Yeah. And people can say, oh, it was, depending on what your politics are, you could say, oh, it was Harper or you could say it was Carney, right? But the truth is during that period of time, this started a credit addiction that Canada has had basically for the last 15 years,
Starting point is 00:18:35 where we got by unscathed and we started feeling invincible and we started piling on debt. And now we have the highest household debt to GDP ratio in the world among the highest. And this is a headwind because we didn't de-leverage. Us in the UK, the only two places that didn't de-leverage in 08, but now we can't add more leverage as a result.
Starting point is 00:18:56 I guess Australia is in the similar boat too, right? Yeah, Australia, Netherlands, and Switzerland actually. Yeah, and obviously I was being facetious. I knew that it was Mark Carney that was Bank of Canada governor and the reason why I said that and you can you explain it pretty well is because it just does not give us a lot of room to maneuver right now. I think that's the point I wanted to make is when you get addicted to the credit like that and you're so indebted, if you start seeing prices that slow down, I mean, you can get into, I don't think we're there yet and maybe
Starting point is 00:19:32 we won't get there, but what we're seeing in China where they're a little bit in a balance sheet recession, right? So they're in a deflationary environment and people have debt to service and incomes are slowing down and revenue is slowing down. So you get into a problem where at least if incomes are rising, then the debt loses value over time. So that's how you can sustain it a bit more. Yeah, you can wash a lot with inflation. It is funny though, because it's like they did get us through the 08 recession, but at what cost? And this is kind of when you hear people talk about kicking the can down the road.
Starting point is 00:20:07 It's like we got through it, but now because we didn't really cap that program afterwards, here we are years later saying, okay, well, we still have too much debt to deal with. Now I think it ends up looking more like a 90s recession where Canada had way more debt than the US heading into it, a way more exuberant housing market heading into it. Actually, just to reference it, Ben Rabideau actually put these charts up. Canadian house prices have now seen the largest decline from peak in over 30 years. So this is actually a worse drop in house prices than the 90s recession so far. So he has the chart here.
Starting point is 00:20:47 The Feb 1989 crash was about 13% off peak. 08, we were about 9% off peak. 2017, which was its own little micro correction, Trump 1.0 when they had that little recession and the rates kind of had to climb up. And actually the stress test was put in on that period too. That was about an 8% correction. And now February, 2022 peak, we're down about 16% from that. And it's crazy because RBC actually put up this chart during the rate hiking cycle that showed their forecast and it says projected price drop would surpass prior corrections and they actually called it like perfectly. I've been using this chart a lot, like I was during that period of time because I always felt that this was going to be that type of downturn for Canadian housing and they nailed it. RBC nailed it. So anyway, all of that to say, it doesn't look the same everywhere
Starting point is 00:21:42 in the country. So we should talk about what it looks like city by city and asset class by asset class if you want. Okay. Yeah, let's do that. So you want to start east, west, center of the universe and then it's up to you. Yeah, maybe the largest, maybe the largest to smallest. So we'll go Toronto and we'll go Alberta and then we'll go, I guess we'll go Toronto, Ottawa, Alberta and then we'll go Montreal I guess we'll go Toronto, Ottawa, Alberta, and then
Starting point is 00:22:05 we'll go Montreal and Vancouver. So Toronto's pretty simple. Condo markets toast like really bad. Going to take years to absorb the amount of new supply that's come on the market and pre-sales are still at record lows. So is it just specifically for these one bedroom, lack of better words, shoebox condos? Is it the two bedroom? Is it certain types of condos or it's really across the board?
Starting point is 00:22:32 It seems to be getting... It gets pulled down because if the price of your one bedroom condo or tiny condo goes... Let's just apply some simple logic here. So setting aside investors, which are the biggest purchasers of those units, but first time buyers are like 50% of your market. So let's just use them as an example. I'm a first time buyer. I bought a little shoebox studio and I'm going to go sell that studio now because I want to move to a two-bedroom condo. My shoebox has gone down 15% in value, so my buying power for my next one has gone down 15 or more.
Starting point is 00:23:13 The knock-on effect spreads in that way. The contagion has stopped when you get into the detached market. 416 detached has been pretty resilient. 905 detached has not pretty resilient. 905 detached has not been resilient because it was really the COVID beneficiary. And now you're seeing a lot of that detached demand come back to the core offices reopening, et cetera. But your 416 condos are in trouble. 905 condos are in trouble. 905 detached is in trouble. 416 detached has been pretty resilient. It did see a big drop, but since that big drop, it's been kind of trading sideways.
Starting point is 00:23:46 The key things to look at Toronto condo wise is like presale activity is like record lows. Like we've not like, you know, 1990s lows, like we're beating those numbers. So far we've seen, I'll pull up some stats from like Urban Nation is a good data house to look at for this stuff. But basically presale condos have fallen off a cliff.
Starting point is 00:24:06 A lot of developers are trying to pivot to rental actually to try and keep their pipeline active. Yeah. So, I guess that's why some banks are resulting now to blanket approvals, right? They want to save some of these projects that are coming online. Yeah. So, the blanket appraisals are pretty interesting because I mean, yeah, they want,
Starting point is 00:24:27 I think what they really wanna do is they want to move the risk away from one single developer and move that risk onto, yeah, onto thousands of buyers with their incomes. And so now all of a sudden you have, you know, you had one developer and one developer's personal guarantee, which I mean, if they trap them in the project, that developer is going to go bankrupt. These are billions, not all of them, but for the most part, these are billion dollar projects.
Starting point is 00:24:50 So the GP of that, the actual entity that owns that project is not going to be solvent if they get stuck. So you take that and you move the risk to a thousand or whatever, let's say the building has a thousand units in it, you move the risk to a thousand or whatever, let's say the building has a thousand units in it, you move the risk to a thousand buyers plus the rental income that they're going to be making from those rental like renting those units out. And realistically, I don't have a ton of empathy for those buyers because they did sign contracts that they're buying those units at that price. So nobody's weeping for them either. But I understand why the banks are
Starting point is 00:25:25 doing this. And it's basically a private sector bailout. You get the big banks who have the staying power to do what the government can't step in and do without getting in trouble. And they're basically bailing out these condo projects to keep the sectors moving to create liquidity basically. Yeah. I mean, the government could be on the hook for part of it though if some of those are a CMHC insured, right? So they yeah, I mean not to the full extent. Yeah. Yeah, they shouldn't be like so we've looked at this at length and realistically Like it's most of the yeah, I can't see there being much CMHC insurance involved with that. Yeah Okay, because that was my that was my primary concern. Yeah, but it's I don't think it's as much of a risk as I had originally thought Yeah, I mean at the end of the day I agree with with you. Look, I made, when I was younger, my early 20s, I made some stupid financial decisions.
Starting point is 00:26:09 I was able to rectify it, but it took me like three, four years to get things in order. And at some point I was quite close to have to declare bankruptcy. I didn't, but you make bad decisions. You just have to, you know, you have to deal with the consequences
Starting point is 00:26:26 Exactly like at the end of the day like yeah, I've done some dumb stuff too. I'm not embarrassed by it I mean I learned from it like exactly make these mistakes so you don't do it more than once Yeah, it's just because if you start bailing out, you know people individual companies like that then Okay, well should they give you money when their investment goes well? Like it to me that they won't so you basically cap their downside but leave their upside unchanged. Yeah what is it privatize the gain, socialize the losses? Yeah exactly that's it. Okay so no Toronto that's interesting especially for the detached holding pretty well in the 416. And when you say detached, does that include semi-detached, townhouse, stuff like that?
Starting point is 00:27:08 Or okay. Those are a pretty small portion of the market, but yeah, they've been, they're in between. They've been more resilient than condos, but less resilient than a fully detached. When I say detached, I mean- Stand alone. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:27:20 And the reason that detached, to think about it from an investment perspective, one of the big reasons why detached has been relatively resilient in the 416 is the City of Toronto up zoned the entire city to four units. And you're seeing this happen all across the country. So you can imagine the impact it's having in other cities. Edmonton was kind of one of the leaders in it. Certain areas of BC have gone up to like six units.
Starting point is 00:27:42 Alberta has gone to like, sorry, Calgary has gone to four unit, sorry, four plus four. So you can actually do like almost an eight plex. So you can do, they call it four plex with suites. So you have a residential detached lot in one of these cities, it's output value. Think about it just like your manufacturer. Before you brought one piece of land onto your assembly line and you could get one house out of it. Now you bring one piece of land onto your assembly line and you can get four rental houses out of it or eight. And so your output value has gone up a lot, which means the willingness to pay from the market has gone up a lot as well. And that's been one of the things that I think has had a really strong impact on
Starting point is 00:28:18 keeping values relatively stable. And I think that that was part of their policy intention to tell the truth. Yeah. And it's a limited supply Too right like at the end of the day, especially in that 416 area It's not like they're building really that many new single-family homes like no No, you know, but like there's no market anymore. Nobody can afford a new single-family house. So yeah, and it's pretty limited I mean we're seeing kind of similar things in Ottawa Like I don't know the market like, you know, obviously as detailed as you but it's pretty limited. I mean, we're seeing kind of similar things in Ottawa. Like, I don't know the market, like, you know, obviously as detailed as you, but it's these older
Starting point is 00:28:49 neighborhoods. They seem to be holding up pretty well in value. And then when you go out a little bit more in the suburbs, that's where you're seeing a bit more, not necessarily major declines, but maybe some more competition because there's still new builds being built there. maybe some more competition because there is still new builds being built there. Yeah, for sure. I mentioned Calgary there as well so we can probably just jump to Calgary. Calgary has been pretty strong and one of the things we've seen that is a massive population growth, tons of people leaving basically everywhere else in Canada, except for I think New Brunswick or sorry, Nova Scotia maybe but one of the Atlantic provinces is still seeing slight growth and then they're going to Alberta.
Starting point is 00:29:30 And so Alberta was the fastest growing place on earth last year I think in 2023 as well, like something like 11% population growth and a lot of its young people, 25 to 44, that working age cohort, they're going there in search of affordability. They can find rent or they were and jobs. The headwinds on that are, I mean, rents jumped up a lot. The market kind of got over demanded and so you get the typical hallmarks of excess demand, house prices rising really fast, rents rising really fast. Calgary, well, Alberta generally is very good at responding to demand. They build a
Starting point is 00:30:06 lot quicker, less red tape, less regulations around the environmental, less land scarcity. And so they hit the gas on supply, supplied the market, and then you saw rents drop actually pretty substantially and post prices have kind of plateaued if not coming down a little bit in the Calgary market. So that market's becoming more affordable again and that's been helpful in kind of like keeping the demand stable. But from an investment perspective, the yields have kind of fallen a little bit, rents have fallen a little bit, prices have fallen a little bit, which I think is a healthy correction that the market needs to see.
Starting point is 00:30:42 And I think that it'll probably be among the more investable markets in Canada for 2020. I'd be reluctant to touch anything with a lot of the uncertainty right now, but if you're desperate to put money into real estate, it's going to be one of the safer ones, I would say. Yeah. Do you think more provinces will follow that model? Kind of a less red tape type of model looking at what's happening in Alberta, but also southern US states where it's a lot of, you know, a lot more free market when it comes to building new houses, less red tape. And what you're seeing right now is I do follow that as well, is there was a lot of demand for these southern states during the pandemic. So of course, builders started building a whole lot and then a lot of supply came online and then the demand waned and then
Starting point is 00:31:29 it's putting some downward pressure on prices, which clearly helps affordability. So do you think you're going to see more provinces trying to do that, mimic that model to help affordability maybe like five to 10 years down the line? I think that they're gonna have to, to be honest. I don't think that most of them have a choice as much as they wanna think that way. They either end up with, there's a really good visual on it that shows basically like places that build, I mean, when you build more, you're attracting capital
Starting point is 00:31:58 and you're creating permanent capital stock, right? Like those are assets. So you can think about micro economies in this way. If Calgary is outbuilding everybody, this is permanent capital stock that Calgary has that is an advantage over places like Toronto. And that can give almost like a lifestyle dividend or a growth dividend to the economy because that greater capital stock relative to the amount of people that lives there distributes them lower rents. And that lower cost of living now can translate to,
Starting point is 00:32:25 I can afford to take a lower wage to work for this tech company. And now the tech company wants to move to Calgary because they can have, and so the knock-on effects of really doing a good job of building an infrastructure in a place like Calgary as an example, I think other cities are just starting to realize, too little, too late probably,
Starting point is 00:32:44 that they shouldn't be so obsessed with being restrictive and exclusionary with zoning and building permits and stuff and that there is a lot of merit to building and making the world affordable, making their municipality affordable. You're starting to see municipal governments compete with one another. To go back to Toronto, a very interesting example, Vaughan reduced their development charges, which is basically a tax that builders have to pay to create a unit. And then Mississauga had to reduce their development charges because those two products compete with one another. And then Toronto eventually will have to probably reduce their development charges. They just put a freeze on increasing them. And these are all things that
Starting point is 00:33:20 would actually be deflationary on the cost of housing, which will make the market more affordable, which will deliver those knock-on effects. So yes, I think all cities across Canada are going to head in that direction. They just do it at a snail's pace because that's how governments work in this country. And for, I guess, to wrap up, Alberto, are you seeing this same kind of thing for Edmonton? Is it just Calgary? Is it across the province or just specific to Calgary? Edmonton is interesting because Edmonton kind of sees like it ends up being a little bit later than the next or then Calgary. It experiences similar knock-on effects. What happens is like
Starting point is 00:34:00 Toronto in 2021, 2020 got crazy expensive. Any young people who wanted to rent or buy a place during COVID, they left and went to Calgary, let's say. Next metropolitan area that they could afford where there wasn't a language barrier for example, like Montreal. So they would move to Calgary and then all of the people who got pushed out of Calgary said, I'm just going to go to Edmonton because it's the closest city here that I can afford. So they did, investor capital, renters, et cetera. And so Edmonton is just going through
Starting point is 00:34:30 that actually, that next phase of growth. My fear with Edmonton is they're probably at risk of overbuilding more than anybody in the country just because you're seeing a ton of Toronto capital going to Edmonton buying these CMHC sixplexes. We've been doing like a lot of these deals, basically like people can go buy brand new buildings from, we haven't done a lot recently because of the risk that I just mentioned, but you know, we were,
Starting point is 00:34:54 and people can go and buy basically a sixplex for like 5% down. They can't do that anymore now. It's like they changed the capital structure a little bit with CMHC, but you know, the market probably will be oversupplied in a year. This is what happened in Calgary.
Starting point is 00:35:10 If you go look at Calgary vacancy rate for brand new houses, brand new units, it went from like 2% in 2023 to 7% in 2024 because of that big supply response and because supply response in real estate lags. So today, Edmonton's vacancy rate is 2%, but all of these Toronto investors are piling in and underwriting their projects on a 2% vacancy and they're excited to be building supply, but they're not looking and counting how many other units all of their other Toronto investors are building around them and saying, oh, what's the vacancy rate going to be next year when this building is actually complete? And then it gets complete and they're trying to lease a project in a 7% or 12% vacancy.
Starting point is 00:35:48 And then now you get the whipsaw effect, right? And that's why that volatility exists in the real estate market. I think the exact same thing that just happened in Calgary in 2024 is going to happen in Edmonton this year. Which will probably be exacerbated by slower immigration in Canada as a whole. There could still be inter-provincial immigration, but it would probably add fuel to that effect. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I think the immigration piece is going to have a very pronounced impact in places like Ontario where that was really... You already saw
Starting point is 00:36:25 it, our rents are down like 10%. I can pull up the data, but we use like live.rent or rentals.ca for their rental reports. You can see rents falling. They've been falling for six months in most cities across Canada. Actually, I'll pull up the most recent one while I'm here. I'm going to pull up the most recent one while I'm here. But yeah. Except Ottawa, I guess. That's what I saw. Yeah, so Ottawa rents and Edmonton rents have gone up. OK, that's interesting.
Starting point is 00:36:53 But everywhere else in Canada has gone. And they've gone up very slightly. I'll pull it up. But it's, yeah. OK. As an investor, I'm always looking to reduce my fees, which is why I'm excited that Questrade now offers $0 commissions on stocks and ETFs. But Questrade isn't just about commission free trading.
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Starting point is 00:38:51 From ZSP to ZEB, we know how to build solutions for the Canadian investor. So the next time you invest in ETFs, consider AZ instead. Visit BMOETFets.com for more. So after the Rand seller, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about Vancouver and BC. Yeah. So I mean, BC is very much going through the same thing that Ontario went through, except they have some better concessions for purposeful rental. So a lot of developers, so they basically have a bunch of condo inventory, same as Toronto, a bunch of unsold condos that are being completed.
Starting point is 00:39:31 There's a lot more foreign capital at play in Vancouver especially that has kind of like, that was really a lot of those people were buying those pre-con units in the Vancouver market years ago. And so that allowed them to pre-sell a bunch of units that are now coming on the market. And so it's probably oversupplied on the apartment stock, whether that be condo or purpose-built rentals.
Starting point is 00:39:52 But you're also seeing a lot of purpose-built rental supply come on the market there. Detached, I mean, it's been pretty much flat since the big drop in 2016. I don't necessarily think it's gonna, it kinda seems to be slowly trying to make its way back up based on a lot of these upzoning things. Now you can build a fourplex on a house or a detached lot in the city of Vancouver. And in Vancouver, it's a lot easier to stratify those.
Starting point is 00:40:16 So you're seeing some developers start getting into building like these little fourplex condos and stuff like that. But generally very similar setup to what we're seeing in Toronto, just not as, not as severe. Okay. Yeah. And I guess there's a lot of natural constraints, right? With Vancouver, like in terms of single family homes, like it's just where you have the Rockies on one side and Ocean on the other. And there's not much space to build on. So I guess you really have to move further out if you want to have a detached home that's relatively affordable. Yeah, it's a significantly supply constrained market for sure. And so that's been kind of
Starting point is 00:40:53 beneficial for it to not... It kind of ends up having a floor, which is what's an investor willing to pay to buy land to create new units. But you can see the impacts, as much as these markets ran up during COVID and that period of exuberance when everyone was trying to buy condos and speculate on the market and whatever, now they're coming down in a comparable amount. Okay. And what are you seeing in the, I guess, Montreal, the third or second largest city in Canada? I keep forgetting. Yeah. Yeah. So Montreal is very fascinating.
Starting point is 00:41:29 It's probably one of the few places that have really managed their way through this without a ton of issues. You are seeing rents coming down a little bit, prices came down a little bit, but no crazy whipsaw up or down. The market seems to be kind of normal there. Like, you know, and a lot of that, from my perspective, is they've always been pretty liberal with purpose-built rental construction.
Starting point is 00:41:53 And so the rental market was consistently supplied by your rental housing providers. There was no necessity of creating this weird capital structure where you relied on pre-construction speculators basically to get housing built and that proved to be a very good thing. And the other thing is you also have like a lot more you know they've always been very favorable to Plex's they didn't have to come in
Starting point is 00:42:19 you know and go and rewrite their zoning code to allow four Plex's like they're laughing at everyone else saying, yeah, you guys are just figuring this out. We've been having fourplexes and we've been doing that since they were invented. Since you could build more than two stories, we were doing it. So those things from my perspective
Starting point is 00:42:36 have really made it a market that's been resilient against some of these issues. Yeah, even on Montreal Island, because obviously people know I'm French and I live in Ottawa But I have a lot of family and friends in Montreal So I go to Montreal pretty often and even on Montreal Island. I mean you see those kind of Whether it's townhomes whether it's like fourplex like you mentioned into multiple units like the townhomes
Starting point is 00:43:00 You see that a whole lot It's just I remember in university a lot of my friends would live in these like, you know, triplex, fourplex that were, yeah, basically like within a townhome, lack of better words. It's pretty common in Montreal. Yeah. And I think a lot of that is like the easiest way to think about that is this whole missing middle concept that we're hearing in Canada is really being borrowed from European housing concepts. And, you know, with Montreal and Quebec City being the two most really European-influenced cities in Canada or probably in North America, you're seeing this comfort with plexes or flats that you would call them maybe in London being a credible housing type in an urban environment where you get a lot of these more
Starting point is 00:43:47 metropolitan attempting cities who really are trying to say, oh, let's rethink urban housing and make, and everything has to be 60 stories and dense and concrete and blue glass and all of this stuff. And I think we've really, like, I honestly think that a line was drawn in the sand and all of this stuff. And I think we've really like, I honestly think that a line was drawn in the sand during COVID that says, maybe that wasn't the right way to be thinking about housing. Maybe not everybody wants to live in a tiny little unit. Maybe it doesn't have to be concrete because that's super expensive way to build houses. Let's go back to this missing middle thing. And that's, I think Montreal is just such a good case study and why that worked because they didn't see the huge run up and they
Starting point is 00:44:25 aren't seeing the huge crash as a result since. You think that's just them figuring out how to make it work with a very old city? Because at the end of the day, right, Montreal is much older than Toronto and Quebec City is older than Montreal. So they had already these constraints. Like anyone who's been to Montreal,
Starting point is 00:44:43 you kind of know these like tiny little streets that are like super hard to get through because I guess back in the day, they were used by horse carriage and not made for cars. So I guess it was over time it got built around that and they managed to build those despite the infrastructure in place. Yeah, a lot of it is necessity of that like adaptive reuse
Starting point is 00:45:04 of like the existing spaces where they kind of just had to do it the way that you're describing, for sure. Yeah, I think that there's, but also I think that there's a limited appetite for kind of like high rise residential living in some of those more European cities. If you're gonna go live in a high rise city, if you're from Montreal, you might high-rise city, you know, you might, if you're from Montreal,
Starting point is 00:45:26 you might be considering New York rather than like Toronto. Like, you know, and so there's less people culturally there lining up to go and live that lifestyle than other Canadian cities that are kind of trying to reinvent themselves as like baby New Yorks, right? Okay, no, that's good. So I guess we'll just talk quickly about Quebec City. What are you seeing there? I know Quebec City is a bit different
Starting point is 00:45:47 than Montreal, smaller of course. Are you seeing similar kind of things? I think there's a little bit more fear around Quebec City and such that it probably would be, you know, with a lot of its economy based on tourism, it could you could really feel the impacts of a recession in Canada. That being said, if this whole buy Canada, staycation concept moving forward ends up being a thing that we actually see appear in Canadian spending patterns, which you hear about it and you see the pictures of the grocery stores and stuff, but I haven't seen it appear in Canadian spending yet. I would say then maybe it could be a good thing. But generally, my thought would be as consumers kind of tighten their belts and we're heading
Starting point is 00:46:32 into recession in Canada, assuming Deloitte's call is correct, a city like Quebec probably could see a little bit of a turbulent time ahead. That being said, prices have always been pretty reasonable there. Rents have always been pretty strong there. The one thing that Montreal and Quebec has going for it and just the province in general is they're not afraid to be tenants. There's not this obsession with home ownership that you see in a lot of other places in Canada. And so if you're an investor, you put some capital in, you have a much bigger pool of tenants to pull from
Starting point is 00:47:06 Relative to the remainder you're not competing with homeownership like you would be in a city like Edmonton like in Edmonton if your Tenants leaving it's probably because they're going to buy a house In Quebec there could be leaving because they don't like the rental unit or they're going to a different one or whatever, right? And do you think Quebec will have some level of resiliency though because it is the capital, the provincial capital. So I would like, I know there's a pretty large amount of provincial, you know, provincial government workers there. So that could give it some stability.
Starting point is 00:47:36 Yeah, I think it's, it does have a pretty like diverse economy. Actually, if you go back to that like Oxford report that we were looking at at the beginning, I think Quebec from an economic diversification perspective, outside of that, the Aluminum Valley, obviously, is not super exposed. I think that in Quebec City, you have a pretty diverse makeup of jobs. The easiest way to think about this is like, what is subject to tariffs right now or what is subject to economic turbulence? And how Sudbury, I think, was like the lowest ranked city from a risk perspective to tariffs as an example. It's because they have the CRA offices there, they have government jobs, they have 10 different types of mining and minerals and Quebec's very similar. They have hospitality, they have government jobs, they have the tourism.
Starting point is 00:48:27 And so I think that there is a lot of diversification that could mitigate that risk as you mentioned. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think even when you look at aluminum, obviously we've seen the tariffs on steel and aluminum, but aluminum should be pretty resilient because there's just not that capacity in the US. For steel, there is some alternatives a bit capacity in the US. For a steal, there is some alternatives a bit more in the US. It'll be interesting there. Speaking of government workers, what about Ottawa? Where I'm living right now, are you seeing some resiliency
Starting point is 00:48:56 because of that? Yeah, I think so. I think there's always been this thesis around places like Washington, DC, and that one got blown to bits in the US. Yeah, before it goes. Yeah. Yeah. You saw all of those posts where basically there's a record number of houses being up for sale in Washington.
Starting point is 00:49:19 I think there's a couple of different ways to think about this. In Canada, at least for the next four years, government probably isn't getting any smaller. But there are other... Ottawa has the lowest office occupancy relative to pre-COVID. Even though it has... So its office vacancy rate is 12%, but its office occupancy rate, which is the footfall of the number of people actually going back to the office, is lower than Calgary's. And yet Calgary's office vacancy rate is 20%.
Starting point is 00:49:45 And so the challenge that Ottawa might have is that the core and the use of the office in government activity is actually still a question mark. I know they're trying to get RTO return to office kind of like three days a week or whatever. But even then, it's like, yeah. I know enough people that work for the federal government to know that it's kind of hit or miss.
Starting point is 00:50:12 There are, but also whether it's applied or not by the various managers, it's kind of hit or miss as well. Yeah. Yeah. So that one, it does make me wonder is could Ottawa... I think Ottawa will be resilient just as like it's a place that Canadians want to live. It's a great city. I think that as COVID really challenged people to understand Canadian geography a little bit better and say, oh, wow, there are other places I can live that have a million plus people and a cool downtown and all of the amenities that I need that aren't Toronto or Vancouver. And I think that that probably is really the long-term like Ottawa really needs to grow into its own as this new market for young people, especially. You're seeing a lot of young people moving to markets like that to start a family or
Starting point is 00:50:49 whatever, because you can't afford to in the city of Toronto. People are going to Ottawa, Montreal, et cetera. Yeah, and I guess just to finish on Ottawa, because obviously I know the market decently well, Ottawa is always an interesting city just to look at it from a housing perspective because you also have Gatineau on the Quebec side so it always provides a more affordable option it has always been like that ever since I've been a kid ever since I've remember I don't know the exact difference obviously you have to account for higher taxes on the Quebec side and other things but I don't know the exact
Starting point is 00:51:22 percent but I would say it's probably a 20% difference in homes. Like just on top of my head, roughly, for a similar house in a similar neighborhood. Yeah, and I mean, it's really just that commute across the bridge, which is a bit of a headache, but not, you know, it's not apparently not primitive enough to make people, yeah, exactly. And so I would agree, I think that that's really
Starting point is 00:51:42 one of the things that makes Ottawa dynamic. It's just been, it's always been an dynamic. It's always been an affordable place, it's been an affordable alternative and it is, I think, a more comfortable city too. As Toronto becomes more metropolitan, if we're just talking in the context of Ontario, there are consequences to that. It's a different type of city for kids, for families,
Starting point is 00:52:00 for you see different things than you might see in a smaller city. And those are things that I think, if you're just considering the housing market, families who are considering buying in those markets are thinking about when they do it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Ottawa is often compared to Calgary. If you've been to Calgary and Ottawa, they have a very obviously two very different cities. One is definitely more on the private side in terms of businesses versus government. But in terms of the feel, the way the city spread out, nature and so on, there are a lot of similarities. But enough about Ottawa. What are you seeing out East? I know like Halifax, for example,
Starting point is 00:52:41 and some of the Atlantic provinces there? Yeah, I think East Coast is fascinating from my perspective because it's got a lot of exposure to the immigration curve where you see really big booming periods in Halifax when there's a lot of population growth. The ebbs and flows can be pretty violent for those markets. Also Halifax, Halifax is the easiest city to look at and say, yeah, they're overbuilt on rental. 6% of the entire rental housing universe in Halifax is under construction right now. So, yeah, so if you're just to translate that over
Starting point is 00:53:15 to the vacancy rate, you've got 6% more units, which means your vacancy rate, assuming all of those end up vacant for a couple of months when they're trying to lease them up, your vacancy rate's to jump up pretty big. And you're also going to see, and you're starting to see this, this is a big thing for investors all over the country, is tenants are price shopping, right? Because I have the chart up right here.
Starting point is 00:53:34 Vancouver rents are down 5.7%. Toronto is down 6.9%. Ottawa is up about 1%. Calgary down 7.8%. Montreal down 4%. Edmonton up 1%. So these changes in rents are causing consumers to go out and start price shopping. And Halifax is no exception to that, right?
Starting point is 00:53:52 If you're seeing all this new supply come on, then what that does is it says people say, oh, well, maybe I'm going to go check out that new building that just went up. And then that can actually pull prices down a little bit as they vacate some of those, that older stock and more of those new units come up. So I think Halifax is probably, and most of Atlantic Canada, I mean, all of the cities are pretty dynamic, but Halifax and Moncton were both huge COVID beneficiaries. A lot of Torontonians moving there to live, buy houses, telecommute. It's always Toronto, huh? Always. It really is, man. I mean, they just go, they show up, they just ruin it.
Starting point is 00:54:28 Yeah, with bags of money and they just, yeah, they show up and then they leave, right? Well, yeah, I mean, it's as easy as thinking about like, you know, that actually Peter Routledge to come full circle on this episode. He did this study in like 2016 about foreign capital in Canadian real estate. And a lot of Chinese investors were coming and buying real estate in Vancouver and people were saying, oh, prices went up 30% year over year. They're like, yeah, whatever.
Starting point is 00:54:53 In Shenzhen, they went up 60%. Apply the same logic. A Torontonian, you tell them, oh, prices just went up, whatever, 10% in Halifax. They're like, yeah, whatever. In Toronto, it just went up 22%. They're very irrational consumers by nature. This was something that was observed with a lot of the foreign capital going into Toronto and Vancouver was they shrug it off. They're like, yeah, whatever, cheaper house price, less volatile than the market I'm coming from.
Starting point is 00:55:20 Torontonians do tend to go and screw of screw up those local markets for sure. They like to do that. I hope the Leafs lose tonight. Yeah. The second blue team that gets kicked out of Ottawa. Yeah, exactly. And what are you seeing for Halifax and the Atlantic regions just for single family home in terms of pricing?
Starting point is 00:55:42 They seem to have stabilized. Yeah. I think they seem to have stabilized, yeah. I think they seem to have stabilized quite a bit. A lot of those markets, they saw the big violent rip up during COVID from Toronto money, and then they saw pretty quickly thereafter. So 2021, 2022 was pretty strong for them. Second half of 22, you saw the prices start to come down.
Starting point is 00:56:03 23, they kind of flatlined, and they're sort of still sideways, not really growing yet, but trying to, right? So I mean, I don't think there are markets that are on this like super severe risk volatility curve. Like I feel like a lot of the risk has been erased by that correction that already happened in those markets. Toronto is the one where people are still super levered.
Starting point is 00:56:23 Houses are still, well, not just Toronto, but GTA in lower mainland. Any market where houses are still trading at a really high price to income, job losses are increasing. I mean, there's probably still downside risk in those markets. Halifax, Moncton, St. John's, they don't have those risk factors from my perspective. And that's why they haven't really been as severely impacted in the last year. Okay and I guess the last city I don't want people to think we forgot them. Do you have some insights on Winnipeg? Yeah Winnipeg is very very similar to Edmonton and I would say both your Regina and Saskatoon are similar as well. Basically what happens there is
Starting point is 00:57:04 you know you get kind get that knock-on effect similar to people leaving Calgary to go to Edmonton for cheaper, et cetera. Rents and prices in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been pretty stable if not growing. So they actually might be seeing a little bit more benefit. And you often see this during recessionary periods, as people actually go back to those markets quite a bit. And I think that that's really been a noticeable impact in this recessionary setup. Those markets have been pretty strong and pretty resilient. It could be anything.
Starting point is 00:57:31 It could be affordability. It could be people looking for jobs in those cities because they have much higher employment rates than Ontario, I'll tell you that much for free. I mean, Toronto's unemployment rate is like 10% right now, right? Yeah, I knew it had gone up. I didn't know Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina were faring much better there. Yeah. And if you go get a job in those cities, you might be in Toronto and looking at...
Starting point is 00:57:54 It's not just the unemployment thing, but it's like if you lose your job in Toronto, you might just be like, do I really want to look for another job here? I already... I don't have my job. I can forfeit my unit and I can go to take a job in whatever Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg and actually afford to live because my rent to income is way lower or my house price to income is way lower. This is the decision that you start to see people making.
Starting point is 00:58:18 The easiest place for people to tighten their belt in a recession is housing, right? Or the most, sorry, the most meaningful. The more effective though, yeah. Yeah, maybe not the easiest, because you have to move. After you cancel your Disney Plus subscription, that's the next thing you have to do. Oh, it was too easy. But overall, I guess we'll wrap it up,
Starting point is 00:58:38 because I do have a time constraint, so I have to go in about less than 10 minutes. But what do you think in terms of how housing, I know it's more generally housing will be impacted by the economy going forward. I know Deloitte is forecasting recession. I think in their forecast for GDP later this year, do you think there's going to be a big impact by tariffs? They also had a bit of a nuanced view, and Deloitte saying that Canada may end up being the least dirty shirts in terms of tariffs applied on other countries from the US. So what are your thoughts on that and the potential impact it could have on housing?
Starting point is 00:59:20 Just as general idea, realizing that of course,, city like Ottawa will have a much different impact than so St. Mary for example, if they're very reliant on steel over there for example. Yeah, I think it's going to be a really regional story but I would say at a national level, I think that we do actually not have it as bad as we think or that it feels. I think that Canada still has a lot of bargaining power with the US. I think that there are a lot of things that they rely on us from a trade perspective. I think that it sounds like the relationship between Carney and Trump is off to a good start.
Starting point is 00:59:51 So I think that I'm optimistic that it won't really be as bad as I might've thought four months ago. But all of that being said, even a good scenario in a trade war is probably, you're still looking at, I think you're still looking at a contraction in GDP. And that Desjardins or sorry, the Deloitte report, it shows kind of province by province. I think the big one to watch from my perspective is going to be Ontario. And the reason for that is it's a GDP per capita thing.
Starting point is 01:00:22 Ontario is still the biggest recipient of population growth, yet we're expected to see only 0.7% growth in real GDP in 2025 based on this Deloitte report. GDP per capita is probably going to fall pretty substantially in the province of Ontario. Everywhere else, Newfoundland and Alberta are both expected to see 1.7% GDP growth, and a lot of that's probably oil market and they have cheaper housing. I do think it is really going to be a province by province story and I think there's a lot of risk for basically Ontario and East and not a lot of risk for the prairies. Okay. No, that's a good way to see it.
Starting point is 01:01:01 I'm with you ever since Liberation Day. I think my view on the impact that tariffs would have on Canada shifted a little bit, of course. It's very hard to make projections if you read any kind of economist trying to make some prediction. Usually they'll be like, they'll preface it with saying, well, first of all, it's ever-changing, constantly changing on the tariff front, and they'll usually outline like three or four different big scenarios, and then they'll mention that there's some multiple almost infinite amount of scenarios that could impact that a bit like the Bank of Canada also said right in their latest statement saying they had like kind of two opposite scenarios that they're working off of that
Starting point is 01:01:42 encompass a bunch of different outcomes, but I would I Would be willing to say that it probably won't be as bad as we thought it would be definitely not like, you know If we go back to March, I think a lot of people were freaking out. I was yeah I mean like and I'm not I'm not really that worried like I I mean I talk about a recession Almost constantly so I feel like if I wasn't insulated against it, I would be concerned for myself. But I think, you know, I'm not really concerned about my own investments and stuff like that. But it's more like I thought that there was going to be a really bad outcome for the country. And I'm feeling less like that than I was before.
Starting point is 01:02:18 Yeah, I actually think there's going to be some positives out of it. I think it really woke up a lot of people to figure out that we need to get a lot of stuff figured out. First of all, like I think a low-hanging fruit, and we've talked about it time and time again, I think you and I have talked about is just inter-provincial tariffs or barriers, trade barriers, for lack of better words. I think that is something that without what's happening right now, I don't think we would have looked at I think that is something that without what's happening right now, I don't think we would have looked at that for multiple years or potentially decades. And it really makes us realize that we have to develop a lot of our infrastructure and
Starting point is 01:02:55 be less reliant on the US. Having said that, we will always be reliant on the US, but less so I think would not be a bad thing. Yeah. I mean, the challenge is it think would not be a bad thing. Yeah. I mean, the challenge is it's hard to be economically competitive when we're shipping goods across. That's the one hard part, right? It's just a lot cheaper for us to trade with the US than it is for us to trade with Europe or the Asia Pacific region because you got to put stuff on a boat to get it there.
Starting point is 01:03:23 But, I mean, look, China did it and they became the supplier to the rest of the world. So I think, you know, when it comes to certain products, LNG, resources, minerals, et cetera, I think I'd love to see Canada play a more meaningful role in that moving forward. Yeah. And the fact that the US may go harder on tariffs on other countries and less on Canada, even if we do have tariffs, it could make our actually our exports more attractive to the US market compared to other countries. And I think that's something that's been lost a little bit here. You don't see that talked a whole lot in
Starting point is 01:03:54 financial media. Yeah, the last piece I'll mention, because I know you got to jump is I think services are really an X factor in this whole thing, because they haven't been subject to tariffs at all. And I look at the way a lot of US companies behave with their hiring and like you see Toronto or like Toronto's like we have a lot of good talent yet people are willing to work for very cheap, like relative to, I mean, your rents are like New York rents, your New York or LA rents. And yet your salaries are like, you know,
Starting point is 01:04:23 St. Louis salaries. So US companies, I really think could start, especially with unemployment rising in Canada, they could say, hey, look, we're just going to set up an office in tech companies where they're so agile, right? Hey, we're just going to move. We're going to expand. Google, everybody already has a footprint here. Why not expand my Canadian office where I can get some really cheap labor rather than
Starting point is 01:04:42 paying all these guys in Silicon Valley, you know, 500 grand a year, USD, why not go to Canada where I can pay them like 70k CAD? So I think the white collar impact is gonna be maybe more pronounced than the blue collar impact for Canada. Yeah, a lot of things I would like to say, but like you just said, I have to run in two minutes. We just gotta do this again.
Starting point is 01:05:02 Yeah, we have to do it again because the terrorists, I think you know me, I like Yeah, we have to do it again because the terrorists, I think you know me, I like to, well, the economy, not necessarily the terrorists, but the economy, I love to talk about that. Well, I really appreciate you coming on. Try to give us a little bit of a breakdown by different cities.
Starting point is 01:05:16 I would encourage people to let us know if you really enjoy that, then we can have Dan a bit more often, maybe give an update on those Canadian markets, just how things are going, if it's useful. People can find you, obviously, like you mentioned on the Canadian Real Estate Investor podcast with your wonderful co-host, Nick Hill. It's released twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays, so you can both listen to our show
Starting point is 01:05:41 and their show if you want to not miss anything on that front. Anything else you wanted to add before I let you go? That's it. Thanks for having me. Okay. Thanks for coming on. The Canadian Investor podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.

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