July 2015 Canadian Economic Fundamentals

[Ally]

Royal LePage: Home prices in Toronto and Vancouver soar in second quarter

Prices for existing low-rise homes in Canada recorded strong growth in the second quarter of the year, especially in already hot housing market such as Toronto and Vancouver.

In Royal LePage’s House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast, released Tuesday, growth was highest among bungalows which recorded a 7.5 per cent price gain over Q2-2014, rising to the country-wide average of $438,938. Two-storey homes followed with a 6.8 per cent increase to $471,002. Though price growth for condos was less robust, the average sale price still saw a 3.9 per cent jump to the average of $268,583.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Greenhouse gases? Not our problem

Part of the hypocritical attack on Canada from the international community when it comes to climate change is that we bear a special burden because our “per capita” emissions of industrial greenhouse gases are among the highest in the world.

Today, I’m going to explain why this argument is nonsense and how, looked at in another equally valid way, Canada is one of the world’s lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.

First off, saying Canada has among the highest “per capita” emissions falsely makes it sound as if every Canadian has an oil well pumping in his or her backyard.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Brad Wall truly looking out for 2015 - rather than 2050 fantasy

The distant future is a politician’s most useful friend — it is where every good and noble thing they promise actually happens. It is where the clutter of present events and the roiling fortunes of this busy harsh and confounding world do not impinge on their their wildest wishes.

For example, under Ontario’s green ambitions, we are given to understand the goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a full 80 per cent by 2050. This is Premier Kathleen Wynn’s pledge, a commitment that will take merely 35 years to be tested — a generous breathing space by any standards for a political commitment, and which happily just might be the identical term it takes to learn all there is to know about the infamous billion-dollar cancellation of a couple of Ontario gas plants a couple of elections ago.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Home price increases over last 5 years... How has your region fared?

Home prices in Toronto have climbed higher and higher over the last few years, but numbers released Wednesday from the Canadian Real Association (CREA) show just how fast the acceleration has been.

The MLS Home Price Index for the GTA reached $557,900 in June 2015. This was an 8.94 per cent increase over the same time last year. Torontonians may no longer be shocked about year-over-year price increases of this size, but consider this: the Home Price Index in the GTA was also up 38.38 per cent from five years ago.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

The rebel sell

Columnists get paid to generate a reaction, and Claudia Cattaneo’s piece last Thursday in theFinancial Post almost certainly accomplished that. In it, she called out Premier Rachel Notley for being insufficiently enthusiastic in promoting the energy sector’s interests, and said that she needs to decide which “team” she’s on. “With Notley abdicating her role as the sector’s champion,” Cattaneo wrote, “it will be up to Wall for now to restore balance to the energy debate.” That kind of language is designed to attract attention, both from those who think the energy sector has held too much influence over Alberta’s political leaders in recent years and those who don’t think it holds near enough over the ones that are currently in office. And while there’s a bit too much rhetorical torque in the piece for my taste – the description of Notley as a “rookie” premier is clearly designed to undermine her authority, and it’s an adjective I don’t recall seeing attached to Jim Prentice’s name – it’s still a fine piece of provocation.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Canada needs to expand crude oil market now that Iran is getting back into the oil game

Speaking during a press conference at the Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference today in Halifax, Rickford said market access is not a priority, it’s an imperative.

Rickford said Canada is well-positioned to expand its market given its political and economic stability.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

QE not on the horizon for Canada and no, we are not in a recession

“This feels like a period of slower growth, but not a period of contraction,” Oliver told reporters on Tuesday.

Technically, he just might be right. But so far the trend line looks grim.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Lack of pipeline space forces gas producers to dial back growth plans

Canadian natural gas producers are losing more ground to U.S. competitors as an acute shortage of pipeline space is forcing them to curb growth.

Producers have been shutting in supplies this year over a capacity squeeze poised to last another few months on TransCanada Corp.’s NGTL system in Alberta, as the pipeline company undertakes inspections and repairs ordered by regulators. Less space on the 23,500-kilometer (14,600-mile) system, which gathers two-thirds of Western Canada’s gas output, has also contributed to volatile prices for supplies shipped on other regional pipelines.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

REALITY CHECK: When forest ecologist and environmentalist Ellen Macdonald interpreted data collected from forests around Fort McMurray, she got two surprises. Not only are emissions from oilsands operations having a positive effect on forest vegetation, so too is the dust that the oil sands operations stir up. And NO she is not a shill for “Big Oil”

When forest ecologist Ellen Macdonald interpreted data collected from forests around Fort McMurray, she got two surprises. Not only are emissions from oilsands operations having a positive effect on forest vegetation, so too is the dust that the oil sands operations stir up.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Be Strategic! Like Strategic REIN Members, Mainstreet Equity finds opportunity in Western Canada real estate slowdown. Are you sitting and waiting or being strategic?

All the risk of real estate – with none of the income!

It doesn’t sound terribly appealing to investors, but it’s worked for Mainstreet Equity Corp. After all, with risk can come reward, and long-term shareholders have had plenty of it: a return of more than 800 per cent from its 2008 low, solely through share-price appreciation (no dividend, thank you).

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Canada's middle class is the richest in study of big nations, beating the USA. Don't buy into political rhetoric or manipulation of facts

Canada’s middle class appears to be the richest in a new study of incomes in several big countries.

The in-depth report published today in The New York Times, which looks at about 20 nations, indicates that Canadians have bumped Americans out of the top spot they have long held.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Don Campbell visited the BNN-TV studios yesterday to talk about the Canadian real estate market. How to identify noise from signal. Here's the segment

Watch the video here.

 

[Ally]

Even Quebec would be a big winner with Energy East Project. 4,000 jobs and $700million in tax revenues

He made the comments on Wednesday, in response to comments by the Quebec premier earlier this week.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he didn't see much economic value for his province in being a "transit place" for TransCanada Corp.'s proposed pipeline, which would carry crude oil from western Canada to refineries on the Atlantic coast.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

New car purchases lift Canada retail sales to record in May

Canadian retail sales rose to a record in May led by new automobile dealers, a rare sign of optimism after weeks of evidence the economy shrank through the first half of the year.

Sales increased 1 percent from the prior month to C$43 billion ($33.1 billion), Statistics Canada said Thursday in Ottawa. The rise exceeded all 18 forecasts in a Bloomberg News economist survey with a median of 0.6 percent.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Which 3 Canadian real estate markets should you invest in? - Don R. Campbell

While Toronto and Vancouver’s housing markets tend to get the most love in terms of news coverage, regularly stealing headlines thanks to record-high price and sales growth, real estate investment guru Don R. Campbell is eyeing smaller markets in Canada – namely Hamilton.

In a recent appearance on MoneyTalk, a personal finance show on the Business News Network, the founding partner of REIN ranked Hamilton as first in his list of the three best real estate markets to put your dollars in – from a real estate investment point of view of course.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Oil sands not a major source of climate change

Alberta’s oil sands producers have received some timely support from the International Energy Agency, with the industry – and indeed the Canadian government – facing increasing condemnation over the failure to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

As the United Nations climate summit continues in Warsaw this week, the IEA chief economist Fatih Birol played down the oil sands’ contribution to global warming, and said the long-term challenge is to access the energy-hungry markets of Asia while slowing the growth in emissions.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

What's happening in real estate markets outside of Toronto and Vancouver?

It may come as a surprise to many Canadians that for several years the hottest resource economy in the country wasn’t Calgary, but St. John’s. Propelled by a boom in offshore oil development and billions in mining and infrastructure investments, the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador has grown roughly 50 per cent since 2000. Jobs and wage hikes quickly followed. Investors from other provinces and as far away as Ireland poured into the market, buying up dozens of homes at a time for rentals. Home prices boomed, more than doubling since 2000 and rising 25 per cent in one year through 2007 and 2008.

“It’s like Newfoundland had to catch up to the rest of Canada, but they did it in just 10 years,” says St. John’s real-estate broker Teri-Lynn Jones.

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Canadian dollar heading for 75 cents, Bank of Montreal says

Read the full article here.

 

[Ally]

Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina all seeing sales well below last year’s levels according to CREA

REGINA — Low interest rates have given buyers confidence and pushed the number of monthly sales in May and June to the highest levels in years, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

The number of Canadian home resales in June hit a record for the month with 56,839 transactions, up 11 per cent from same month last year, CREA said Wednesday. About two-thirds of all local markets showed increases from a year earlier.The association’s national home price index was up 5.43 per cent in June from the same month last year and the national average price for homes sold in June was $543,560 — up 9.6 per cent from a year earlier.CREA economist Gregory Klump says national sales activity was boosted by a record-high volume of sales in the Toronto area. He says the Toronto-area records would have been even higher if there weren’t a shortage of listings for single family homes.

Read the full article http://www.leaderpost.com/business/Home+sales+record+highs+June/11217016/story.htmlhttp://www.leaderpost.com/business/Home+sales+record+highs+June/11217016/story.html

 

[Ally]

Guaranteed Rent offers, are they the strategic investor solution?

One of Canada’s largest real estate developers, faced with skittish investors worried about a Toronto condo crash, is offering a guarantee on rental income for two years.

Although this type of deal is not without precedent, it does raise the question of what buyers are ultimately paying for this perk?

Read the full article here.