Getting WORSE For Young People | Canada Real Estate

Hey, here's what I got a lot of comments on two years ago when the sort of house, soaring house price bubble kind of stopped and everybody could tell it stopped because the rates went through the roof two years ago and the Bank of Canada raised rates and fixed rates went through the roof and inflation was running hot and that was the end of the boom in housing prices. That just ended right across Canada. I mean, sure, Alberta for its own reasons because people are attracted to go there and prices were much, much lower. Sure, it's done well and in Quebec, yeah, prices have been okay. I mean, they haven't soared. Nobody could ever say they soared in Quebec and they didn't soar before. Prices in Quebec are nearly half price, in some cases 60% less than the equivalent in Ontario or British Columbia. So that's a lot less. That's a ton less. But the real truth is I got a ton of questions and comments when the prices sort of stopped rising and started to teeter. Hey, Ron, are we finally going to see like prices drop 50% and young people are finally going to have a chance again to just get into the housing market on their own without help from their parents, without having to invest it in Bitcoin and made a mint or some damn thing. In other words, there didn't require a vast transfer of wealth to get enough down payment from parents or from selling other assets to be able to get a down payment and buy a home. I got all those questions. When are the prices going to really fall? Truth is the prices really haven't fallen that wildly. Like a big drop in prices is 30%, 40%. We have not really had that except for the people who bought at the very peak in 2021 and 22. Many of those prices have fallen. But we're nowhere near 2018 prices yet, which were still too high. Really, they were high, but we're nowhere near that. So what happens? Young people still can't afford these properties on their own in Ontario and British Columbia. And maybe the worst part is people are told, oh, listen, you guys just need to, this guy needs to get into the market, buy a starter condo. Buy one of those tiny condos as an individual or as a couple. Buy one of those tiny condos. You could probably afford that and that'll be your starting point and they'll go way up in value. No, ****, now we're fucked, okay? Doors are going down in value. Like sweet Jesus, yes, no. And they're so terrible. I know, I know. A hundred replies. Oh no, we love our 500 square foot condo. Yeah, you really don't, okay? So the thought, when people go and look at, young people go and look and say, well, this is my way to start. I want to buy this tiny condo in this building that I just hate the layout and that the condo is ridiculous. Like there's only one piece of natural light comes into it. I hate everything about it, but it's my only hope. But it's still $500,000 or 600,000. Yeah, no, young people don't want that really. They really don't want to invest in something they don't like. I mean, even 15 years ago, they could have bought something and bought a townhouse. They could have bought something that they could say, yeah, I can see living here for a little while. This can be my starter home. When people see a 485 square foot condo, they think, yeah, **** no, I don't want this. This is terrible. That's the truth. I know everybody gets mad, but dog creek condos, people don't really want them. They're just a rental product and that ain't working out at all. Now those prices are falling. So this is a terrible conundrum. The fact that prices have not come off substantially and maybe even worse, we quit building the stuff that people would actually want. I mean, there has, I don't think there's been a townhouse started in the GTA, started, like listen to me carefully, started, not finished, but started in the GTA for almost all of 2024, unless people who actually bought them pre-bought them and the builder had to buy them, those sales offices have all closed. So this is the horror of it all. We're not building anything new. So that's a kind of a prop for the prices. Okay. Alberta? Yeah. I mean, there may be a point where, because the prices have surged in Calgary. So there may just be a point coming soon where people start to say, whoa, I don't even understand this price. And also sometimes people ask me, hey, why are the prices in Alberta still substantially less? I mean, it's booming. People are coming in, tons of newcomers to Alberta from other provinces. Like I mean, tons, tons, massive growth in some of the locations. Prices are still not crazy like Ontario. Yeah. Because up till now, that may change, but up till now, land was relatively cheap. Land was easily accessible. There wasn't 25 studies just to decide whether you could buy the farmer's land and build houses. It wasn't made incredibly difficult by over-regulation, Greenbelt and other kinds of crazy shit. Okay. Nor was it over-regulated in terms of just even being able to build the townhouse or build the semi or build the single family detached. It wasn't like unmanageable layers of red tape just to get a permit. It was just easier to build and therefore prices stayed relatively low compared with some parts of Canada. So, but will that repeat around? I mean, in other words, some of the mayors, the mayor they got in Edmonton, the mayor they got in Calgary right now, I don't know. I mean, those things may change. I mean, it sounds like they're starting to fall in love with regulation and other BS too. So, and eventually the prices just start to hit a peak and people start to scratch their heads and say, I'm not sure how I'm going to afford this. So where are those prices going? But most importantly, they're starting to reach a point where young people can't really easily afford those homes either. And they sure as hell without a lot of help from parents, without some kind of windfall from selling stock in the stock market or some damn thing, nobody can on their own, ordinary people like a nurse and somebody who's the assistant manager at a supermarket, like just ordinary working people can't come up with a down payment and can't afford the mortgage in BC and Ontario unless they already own. Like it's impossible for young people to get a start. Still prices would have to come off a lot more or wages would have to come up a lot more in those provinces for young people to have a chance. So it's still a bad, bad situation for young people trying to buy a house of their own.