owned a house for over 20yrs and have not seen them drop as fast as they went up and have continued to climb .
The last 20 years has been nothing but an unprecedented BOOM for Canadian housing. Ive owned a house for 17 and participated in it. In Vancouver (but also Toronto), if you made a smart real estate move 15 years ago, ie leveraged up and extended yourself, you've probably made more after tax money simply by owning a home than any normal profession - doc, lawyer - doesnt matter. That is not what owning a HOME is supposed to be like but that is exactly what owning an assets that sees a speculative investment is like. My assessment is up 44% y/y. Look at history - homes appreciate on average ~1/10th of that - all things regress to the mean over time.
I dont think that we are going to see extreme weakness but I do think all of our July 2017 assessments can be down 20% or even 25% y/y. If we find out that foreigners can walk away from the houses if they're underwater and, if they have mortgages through Canadian banks and the banks cant go after them due to national borders, look out.