In news that doesn’t exactly evoke that fuzzy festive feeling, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that it will take “years” to fix Canada’s dramatic housing market (***pours rum into the eggnog***).
Freeland conveyed the news during the government’s fall fiscal update earlier today.
It’s no surprise that Canada’s housing crisis has reached new levels of concern: demand is soaring; home prices are breaking records; cities across the city house relentlessly low supply; the need for affordable housing has never been more urgent; and investors continue to gobble up precious real estate to turn profits.
READ: Every Housing Promise Trudeau Made Ahead of His Re-Election
Still, Freeland’s words manage to land like a punch to the gut of Canada’s first-time, would-be home-seekers.
Aerial view of Toronto city/Shutterstock
But the reality is that there’s not going to be a quick fix to tackle the challenges of Canada’s increasingly unattainable housing market, from the sounds of Freeland’s update. Many of these challenges will take time to fix, even as prices normalize “some” when the pandemic loosens its grip.
“In addition to rising inflationary pressures, strong housing demand throughout the pandemic combined with limited supply has led to significantly higher house prices across the country,” the update explained.
“It will take years of strong supply growth to address the acute affordability challenges Canadians are facing in some regions of the country,” it said.
From Toronto's controversial, newly-introduced inclusionary zoning mandate, to talks of a speculation tax, a variety of initiatives have been brought to the table as of late in attempt to cool the red-hot housing market.
As home prices continue to soar across the country, and the number of defeated house-hunters increases, only time will tell (apparently, years...) whether any proactive initiatives to cool the market will actually do so.
