Real Estate Bandwagon?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]All right, for the better part of a year, I've been discussing the [ __ ] of the whole real estate industry.

[00:00:06]Um, telling everybody in Ontario, particularly Ontario, but to a lesser extent British Columbia, too. But in Ontario, particularly for a whole year, we've been hearing nothing from but from realtors that the market is turning.

[00:00:19]Don't get me wrong. There's some honest guys, very honest guys. I know them.

[00:00:22]I've had them on our show. But we know we've heard a lot of it. The market's turning, it's almost there.

[00:00:27]It's just a bit You don't buy now, it's going to be way up. You've heard it all.

[00:00:32]But what's happening now is it's not just realtors anymore. It's not just mortgage brokers peddling [ __ ] anymore, okay? Now it's the government and it's banks and it's university economists, okay? Now everybody's joining in because like we got Doug Ford, we got Doug Ford My friends! My friends! We have lowered the cost of new construction homes. We have brought in the HST exception. We have lowered development fees and now the price of brand new construction homes is great and everybody should go out there and buy new construction homes, okay? All right, Doug.

[00:01:27]Um Yeah, we got the government to We got But it's on all levels of government. So if you think about the federal government chipped in on all these this reduction in HST, which is a good thing.

[00:01:37]I'm happy Look, with me any tax reduction is good. Like every single one of all types at any amount is good. It's all good. So happy with the HST HST reduction, happy with the the temporary suspension of it, the temporary credit. I'm very happy that development fees are going down by 50% in certain municipalities. Even though weirdly Canadian taxpayers across the country are going to pay to reduce development fees in Ontario. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody will tell me, "No, you got that wrong, Ron. I mean like We all different provinces support different things." I got news for you. There's There's hard There's never going to be a development fee reduction in Alberta because the development fees are low enough, okay?

[00:02:21]So somebody if if it's coming from the federal government, somebody's paying somewhere for crazy crazy high development fees in Ontario and British Columbia. Somebody's paying, trust me.

[00:02:31]But look, let's get clear on this. The banks are starting to to jump on board, too. It's like, "Oh, this is I think we're going to see a a turnaround in the real estate industry. I think that you know, I don't know there's going to there's definitely going to be a bottom." I mean, the banks are a lot more cautious and careful. They'll say things like, "Eventually a bottom will come in and then of course the real estate the real estate sector will recover." I mean, you can say things in like a general way. Uh that's not too harmful. I mean, you got some university economists. We got some various economists are saying, uh "Yeah, we believe the recession risk for Canada is diminishing and uh that would tend to indicate there would be a an improvement in the overall real estate market coming soon, okay? So literally everybody because what Why is it now? Because first of all it takes a long time for people to figure out what you and I realized two and a half years ago, okay? Like it literally took governments to just now to realize the residential construction industry was collapsing, okay? It took two and a half We're We're telling everybody about it for two and a half years. Government figured it out about a week and a half ago, okay? So that's why governments now now government's got to put the push on because guess what?

[00:03:55]You don't get taxes from people who aren't working. You don't get taxes when there is is no building happening. You don't You you need to keep the taxes flowing because nobody's taking away the provincial sales tax, nobody's taking away um well they're taking away the provincial sales tax on new builds, but to get the whole thing going again, it's only for it's only for temporary periods of time, okay?

[00:04:23]But they realize they got to get the tax engine up and running again, okay?

[00:04:27]That's the key. That's why government's getting on board the real estate bus, okay? What about the banks? The banks are starting to think, "Look, this renewal wave is over.

[00:04:38]And by the way, the renewal wave for the banks is kind of a neutral thing because there's business going leaving to go to other banks or just getting paid off and there's you know, they're gathering up new businesses new business from the new mortgages from their renewal wave. But here's what the banks know, when the renewal activity drops in 2027, the middle of 2027 it would be nice if some purchase business came back because purchase is always something banks thrive on is the purchase mortgages. So that's been very very quiet in Ontario, British Columbia.

[00:05:10]It's starting to quiet down in Alberta already. Could be quieting across Canada in some ways, but yes, they want real estate to make a comeback, too.

[00:05:19]Banks are very very invested in real estate, obviously. So you're going to hear some encouragement out of banks. As far as economists are concerned who knows? Um you know, they like that's one profession that you're always certain that they're wrong half the time. Like it just is. So as quickly as they change their mind about how real estate will be depressed, now it's time to think about real estate coming back.

[00:05:46]But what we're hearing now is we're hearing a lot of institutional chatter about the revival of real estate. Now is this a good thing because yeah, all the tax reduction is a good thing.

[00:05:59]Unequivocally, it's a good thing, okay?

[00:06:02]However are we starting to get to sort of the Gregor Robertson moment where we want young people to afford homes, but we don't want any of the prices to go down because we got to keep the boomers happy? Are we starting to really get really zoned in on that? Is that what's really happening here? Because it sort of sounds like it. Like real estate prices coming down down down in Ontario, quite significantly coming down in British Columbia, certainly cooling off, prices off a bit in Alberta. So that would be good for young people to be able to afford houses, right? Like that would be a great thing for them to keep coming down. But wait, far enough. It's gone down far enough.

[00:06:43]We don't need it to go down any farther and now it's time for us to start to push real estate.

[00:06:51]Banks, governments institutions Yeah, we got to get back on the real estate bandwagon.

[00:06:59]Because it's neces- because it's 8% of Canada's economy. You can't just let it fall off a cliff. Some people think it's closer to 10, but you just But and it took this long, no matter how many times we've talked about it, no matter how many posts we put up, no matter how many I'm not just me, but many many others, how much on social media we've talked about the complete desolation in the real estate business.

[00:07:24]It just takes two and a half years longer for everybody else to wake up to it. So now they're on board, now they want to push it, they have their own agendas, their own reasons to push it. So we're going to see it pushed, but the reality of life is you can't fix something until it really hits rock bottom, but I believe that with all the energy that the various institutional factors are going to put into it I believe that it will slow the descent of prices and ultimately for the sake of young people, I wish they could have come down more.