{"id":11841,"date":"2015-09-05T06:52:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T11:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11841"},"modified":"2015-09-05T06:52:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T11:52:33","slug":"whats-coming-unglued-now-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11841","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Coming Unglued Now in Canada?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/09\/04\/office-tower-bubble-calgary-alberta-canada-turns-into-office-tower-glut\/\" target=\"_blank\">What\u2019s Coming Unglued Now in Canada?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Canada lumbered through the first half of 2015 in a \u201ctechnical recession,\u201d Statistics Canada confirmed this week, as GDP shrank in both quarters. Among the culprits: the swooning energy sector and an investment slump.<\/p>\n<p>Now everybody is lining up behind the hope that a sudden acceleration will put the economy back on track in the third quarter, despite oil that has re-crashed and despite the ongoing collapse \u2013 and that\u2019s what it is \u2013 of the all-important energy sector.<\/p>\n<p>To get to this acceleration, the once booming residential and commercial construction sectors have to hold up, or else Canada\u2019s economy is in real trouble. Alas\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCanada is also in the midst of an ill-timed supply surge that caused vacancy rates to rise even in markets with positive absorption\u201d in the second quarter, warns a new report by commercial real estate firm Colliers International cited by the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/news\/property-post\/half-empty-office-buildings-on-the-rise-in-calgary-edmonton-amid-oil-price-plunge\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Financial Post<\/u><\/a>. It paints a picture of an epic office boom turned into an even more epic office glut, particularly in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, the epicenter of Canada\u2019s oil patch.<\/p>\n<p>This office glut comes on top of Calgary\u2019s housing meltdown. For the first eight months, total home sales in Calgary plunged 25%, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.creb.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Calgary Real Estate Board<\/u><\/a>. Condo sales collapsed 39% in August and 30% year-to-date. Inventory sits a lot longer on the market before it sells, if it sells. And pressures are building on prices: the average condo price was down over 10% in August from a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>Commercial real estate is heading in a similar direction. Only worse. Calgary was a boom town. Office towers have been sprouting like mushrooms. In recent years, commercial real estate costs downtown were \u201cgoing through the roof\u201d and \u201caccelerating at a pace far beyond the Canadian average,\u201d Calgary Chamber of Commerce director of policy and research Justin Smith told the\u00a0<em>Financial Post<\/em>. But it takes years to plan and build office towers, and now no one can just turn off the flow.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s Coming Unglued Now in Canada? Canada lumbered through the first half of 2015 in a \u201ctechnical recession,\u201d Statistics Canada confirmed this week, as GDP shrank in both quarters. Among the culprits: the swooning energy sector and an investment slump. Now everybody is lining up behind the hope that a sudden acceleration will put the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1082,2693,103,8699,1851,7815,353,8698,1264,1936,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-11841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-alberta","tag-calgary","tag-canada","tag-canadas-oil-patch","tag-commodity-price-collapse","tag-energy-sector","tag-gdp","tag-office-glut","tag-recession","tag-statistics-canada","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11842,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions\/11842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}