Housing optimism surges in Canada with rate cuts on horizon (2024)

Canadians are growing bullish on housing again.

Nearly half of them — 48 per cent — say they expect the value of real estate in their neighbourhoods to increase over the next six months, according to a poll by Nanos Research for Bloomberg News. Only eight per cent foresee a decline. The rest expect no change or are unsure.

Article content

That difference of 40 points is the largest since May 2022, two months after the Bank of Canada began to raise interest rates.

Article content

Excluding 2020 to 2022, the pandemic period during which home prices rose at an extraordinary pace, its highest reading on property prices since the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index began in 2008.

Bank of Canada officials said last week they may soon begin to lower the overnight interest rate if inflation measures continue to move in the right direction. Plenty of potential homebuyers have been waiting for lower borrowing costs to make a purchase, and Canada’s rapid population growth has created additional housing demand.

“Let’s just say that if the Bank of Canada doesn’t cut rates soon, many in the real estate market are going to be seriously disappointed,” Robert Kavcic, senior economist at Bank of Montreal, said in a note to investors.

The Bank of Canada expects “moderate growth” in house prices over the next two years. But officials cited the possibility of a sharp increase as one of the main upside risks to their inflation forecast.

Every week, Nanos Research surveys about 250 Canadians for their views on personal finances, job security, the economy and real estate prices. Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 telephone responses. The poll has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

—With assistance from Erik Hertzberg.

Bloomberg.com

Article content