Summary of housing policy actions
2023 has been a momentous year in housing policy at the provincial level. More has changed this year on the housing front than did in the past 40, and it’s getting quite confusing to keep...
Category: Weekly
Leaseholds
As shown in the last article, affordability continues to be extremely poor for any kind of ownership housing. In the past affordability has waxed and waned, but those are cycles measured in 10+ years, and...
Playing with affordability
We know that there’s been no relief in affordability lately. After staying relatively steady for a year as prices fell in concert with rising rates, it deteriorated even more in recent months as rates pushed...
Some rate relief, but damage is reverberating
The market has been primarily driven by rates in the last 18 months. Last year we saw a rapid price drop during the initial hikes followed by rate stability bringing back some exuberance in the...
About those AirBnB regulations
Last week the provincial government brought in broad new restrictions on short term rentals, defining minimum standards on what’s legal, unveiling new strategies for enforcement, and most surprisingly, ending the practice of grandfathering for short...
What’s going on with condo affordability?
We know that single detached affordability will get worse and worse over the long run simply because houses will get more and more rare as a percentage of available homes. That means the remaining houses...
More on westshore weakness
Last week I mentioned that despite the overall market remaining in a mild sellers market territory, market strength depends on where you’re looking. Rising rates sideline buyers, but only if those buyers are dependent on...
What happened to those rental-restricted condos?
Just under a year ago, the BC government abolished rental restrictions in BC condos. As a reminder, at the time the landscape of condos looked like the chart below, with the majority of condos built...
Fall market arrives early
Victoria saw a strong week for new listings to start off the fall market. There were 35% more new resale listings in metro Victoria last week than the same week a year ago, and that...
Priced out forever?
I’ve spilled a lot of virtual ink on affordability on this blog and why I believe it matters. In short, there are generally two affordability stories: For condos, affordability has oscillated between bad and good...