{"id":7120,"date":"2015-04-06T06:35:54","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T11:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7120"},"modified":"2015-04-06T06:35:54","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T11:35:54","slug":"canada-housing-office-market-mauled-by-oil-layoffs-but-vancouver-bubble-still-soars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7120","title":{"rendered":"Canada Housing, Office Market Mauled by Oil, Layoffs \u2013 but Vancouver Bubble Still Soars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada Housing, Office Market Mauled by Oil, Layoffs \u2013 but Vancouver Bubble Still Soars<\/a><\/h3>\n

Back in December, the Bank of Canada said home prices were overvalued by as much as 30% and posed an \u201celevated\u201d risk to the Canadian financial system. In January,\u00a0Deutsche Bank<\/a>\u00a0found that Canada\u2019s housing market was, more realistically, 63% overvalued.<\/p>\n

In greater Vancouver, the \u201cbenchmark\u201d price of all types of homes (detached, townhouse, and apartment) in March rose 7.2% from a year ago to C$660,700, according to the\u00a0Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver<\/a>. Detached homes jumped 11.2% to C$1.05 million; and in Vancouver West, 12.3% to a breathtaking C$2.4 million.<\/p>\n

Those are the Board\u2019s \u201cbenchmark\u201d prices. The\u00a0average price<\/a>\u00a0for detached homes in Vancouver soared 16% from a year ago, surpassing $1.4 million for the first time. Transactions skyrocketed 54%; supply plunged 15%. Prices were doped by low interest rates, limited supply, and foreign investors. This market is\u00a0hot<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But the oil patch of Canada is skidding into serious trouble.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent international price war over oil has demonstrated the risks and dangers of relying on energy revenue to fund public services,\u201d Alberta\u2019s government\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, as it presented a C$43.4 billion budget for fiscal 2015\/2016. It projects arevenue decline of C$5.6 billion!<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201csimply irresponsible\u201d to rely on unstable oil revenues \u201cto fund health, education, and other vital public services that Albertans depend upon,\u201d the government said.<\/p>\n

And things would change. Energy revenue would from now on \u2013 if they ever return to prior levels \u2013 be treated as \u201cwindfall\u201d that would at least in part go into savings. And there would be a slew of new taxes and fees, such as a bump in gasoline taxes, steeper income taxes for high-income earners, and a new health-care levy. With these measures, the government\u00a0hopes<\/em>\u00a0to balance the budget three years from now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canada Housing, Office Market Mauled by Oil, Layoffs \u2013 but Vancouver Bubble Still Soars Back in December, the Bank of Canada said home prices were overvalued by as much as 30% and posed an \u201celevated\u201d risk to the Canadian financial system. In January,\u00a0Deutsche Bank\u00a0found that Canada\u2019s housing market was, more realistically, 63% overvalued. In greater […]<\/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":[1082,2693,103,1956,406,2340,1775,1340],"class_list":["post-7120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-alberta","tag-calgary","tag-canada","tag-canadian-housing-market","tag-housing-bubble","tag-housing-market","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120","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=7120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7121,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions\/7121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}