A recent article by Vancouver's "favourite" immigrant "hater" raises some interesting points about the current housing market.
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-five-forces-contorting-canadian-home-prices-this-spring
Opinion: Mortgage rates, changing psychology, Canada's vulnerability, large volumes of investors and migration policy are squeezing the country's housing market.
My thoughts on the article combined with a few other bits of info:
Some may disagree with Todd due to the "foreign" factor in his arguments, but I think he's actually not far off from the truth in this article, particularly for Van and TO. The potential fly in the ointment though is how many investor owned properties are sitting empty and what could happen if they need to be sold.
If the economy changes drastically enough that empty (or occupied) investment properties come on to the market in a rush we could be in for some significant trouble. There have been approximately 96K condo completions in the Metro Vancouver region since 2016. That 96K includes data for 2017-2021 (81,314) and a reasonable estimate of 15,000 for 2022. Metro Vancouver is from West Van to Pitt Meadows and south to Tswassen/Surrey. That doesn't include Langley/Abby/Chilliwack which would add another 14K (total guess on my part) condos over that time frame? This could mean a total pool of around 110K condo units.
Depending how many of the 49% of those investor condos are sitting empty (50% ???) and suddenly came onto the market, all within say a 12 month period, you could have an additional 27,000 condo units come onto the market at most likely significantly reduced prices in a fairly short time. To put that into perspective there are currently around 4600 condos for sale from West Van to Chilliwack (Lower Mainland), so the market could get flooded. Reports estimate that there are about 60,000 empty homes in Metro Vancouver, so my estimate of 27,000 seems pretty reasonable. Compared to the total housing inventory of around 12,000 units, those additional units would more than triple the total number of units on the market.
Data sources:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/MV_HousingDataBook_2022.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0t_2aJ-kBsvKxH-ig8qAJnDlb2-8jLEwluq_dtCCbWK6u5cw3fqAVY-rI
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/astonishing-drop-in-number-of-empty-homes-in-metro-vancouver-census