97: Ben Rabidoux on how Housing defied the worst economic downturn in history

Episode Transcript
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Preet Banerjee (00:00):
What is more invincible Superman or Canadian

(00:04):
Real Estate?

Ben Rabidoux (00:05):
Oh man I read.
Canadian Real Estate has beenabsolutely bulletproof. It's
pretty hard to see anythingthat's got more of a Teflon coat
than Canadian Real Estate rightnow. Right? I mean, we go
through like, do you go through100 year pandemic, your worst
economy on record, which I'msure we're gonna talk about all
of this. You come out the otherside and you got housing?

(00:27):
Absolutely exploding houseprices, booming. I mean, it's
just insane.

At the start of the pandemic, did Ilan musk go
on an sctv revival show and sayCanadian Real Estate was going
to the moon? I don't recall thathappening. So what else could
explain the meteoric rise inhome prices off of a backdrop of
3 million jobs initially lostback in early 2020? With many

(01:05):
businesses forced to be shutdown with lockdown after
lockdown? Well, there's oneperson who can help answer that
question. You know, it's Benrabiu. He's going to dive deep
into a number of factors thattaken together may help you
figure out what's beenhappening. Here's just a sample

(01:26):
of the topics that we cover inthis episode. Most of the people
who lost their jobs weren't in aposition to buy in the first
place. Those who were tended tosee their financial situations
improved during the pandemic. Wehave lower interest rates than
have further increased debtservicing ability. We also take
a look at population dynamicsthat negatively affected the

(01:47):
rental market more than theresale market, changing consumer
preferences and so much more. Sograb your popcorn because Ben
rabiu is going to enlighten andentertain you in this episode of
mostly money.

(02:14):
This is mostly money, and I amyour host, Preet Banerjee, and
let's get down to business.
Today's guest is backed bypopular demand. If you have
questions about housing and realestate, like pretty much
everybody does, he's your guy,then revenue is the president of
North Cove advisors, a Canadianresearch firm that works
exclusively with institutionalinvestors around the world by

(02:34):
providing coverage of Canadianhousing, macro, economic and
household credit trends. He alsojust launched a new firm edge
realty analytics that providesmarket intelligence to real
estate industry professionals,edge analytics.ca. And I'll be
sure to ask Ben about that atthe end of this episode as well.
But for now, Ben, welcome backto the show.

Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again.

Yeah, it's it's too bad. We're not here in
person drinking whiskey. It'snormally me doing all the
drinking and you sort of holdinga whiskey glass and talking
because you have so much to sayand to share with people I feel
it's almost unfair to you tosort of pour that glass because
you don't actually get to enjoyit, because they make you do all
the talking. But how does itfeel? First of all, to be the

(03:19):
most requested guest on thisshow? Yeah, that's Hey, that's
great. You know, it's it's atopic I think that's near and
dear to everybody right now. Imean, real estate is just it
always seems to be topical inCanada, but perhaps even more so
than right now when everything'sjust going completely insane.
So, always happy to be backtalking about? Yes. So you know,

(03:40):
I have to ask you what is moreinvincible, Superman or Canadian
Real Estate? Oh, man, I read.
Canadian Real Estate has beenabsolutely bulletproof. It's
pretty hard to see anythingthat's got more of a Teflon coat
than Canadian Real Estate rightnow. Right? I mean, we go
through like, do you go through100 year pandemic, your worst

(04:00):
economy on record, which I'msure we're gonna talk about all
of this. You come out the otherside and you got housing?
Absolutely exploding houseprices, booming. I mean, it's
just insane. Well, listen, ifyou were to raise Stanley from
the dead and say, Hey, how aboutthis super hero that has all
these powers and noinvincibility be like, no, it

(04:22):
wouldn't sell you need some kindof vulnerability, right? You
know, everyone has to fall downat some point in time. So it
would make no sense to create acomic book character modeled
after Canadian Real Estate thatis so invincible. You know, if
you look in the in the movies ofSuperman, someone fires a bullet
like a rifle shot right to theguy's eyeball. I forget which

(04:42):
movie it was, but it bounced offhis cornea. Canadian Real Estate
is watching by the sideline. Thething is that all you got in
Superman to with ChristopherReeve, remember his girlfriend
dies and so he decides, you knowwhat, I will go fly around the
world backwards counter to theEarth's rotational
Spin to turn back time.
questionable physics. Yeah,wherever they go, we need you to

(05:03):
roll with it. And on thesideline is Canadian Real Estate
saying childsplay? Pretty much.
So yeah, so let's, let's unpackall of this. And what's been
happening in, in Canadianhousing, it's, it's like you
said, you set it up perfectly,you know, 100 years sort of
pandemic. It's, we've seen theselock downs last four months. And

(05:27):
in Ontario, it feels likethere's been very little
reprieve from from the lockdowns. And at the beginning of
the pandemic, we saw 3 millionjobs lost in March and April of
2020. So let's go deeper. Whydid that alone not have the
expected impact? Just looking atjobs?

I mean, there's so much to unpack here. And you're
right, it was a tremendous hitto the economy, people. I mean,
it's hard. It's hard tooverstate just how significant
that was for the economy, right.
I mean, the magnitude of theeconomic decline was
unprecedented. The job losseswere unprecedented. I mean, it
was magnitudes greater. I mean,I did the math, and it was
almost nine times greater thejob losses, cumulative job

(06:08):
losses in those two months ofMarch and April 2020. Then
during the entire financialcrisis, I mean, it was just
enormous. But maybe the prefacethe discussion, if we rewind the
2019, one of the interestingthings, and I don't remember the
last time I was on pre to whenwe had the discussion, but I
feel like it was maybe early2019, I'd have to go into luck.

(06:30):
But

I think it was early 2019, you said housing was
about to crash sell everything.
That doesn't sound right. Yeah,I forget what it was. And I
forget your prediction, I thinkyou you had a very measured
approach. If I know you,

it's funny, though. It's, I'll have a
conversation with, I don't wantto throw anyone in the media
under the bus for like 10 or 15minute conversation with someone
in the media. And it'll be like,they'll remove the snippet, then
right on to like the onesensational soundbite out of a
measured 10 or 15 minuteconversation. And that's the

(07:04):
thing that makes it in the news,right, like Canada's biggest
housing, bear comments. Yeah,right. It's funny, because, you
know, you and I were talkingoffline before we got on here.
And in 2019, it became prettyclear to me that the inventory
levels across the country wereplunging, right, and you sort of
have to be a slave to the datain this business, you can't, you
can't have strong opinions, youhave to be able to change them

(07:27):
when they went when the datachanges. And it was clear that
inventory was plunging saleswere were fairly strong, but not
explosive. But the real storythrough 2018 was just this
unbelievable, steady decline inactive listings across the
country. And I was making thepoint to my clients, probably by
mid 2019, that like, Look, ifsomething doesn't change, here,

(07:49):
we're gonna see an explosivemove to prices to the upside,
because if you go back evenfurther, the last time we had
sort of a really frothy marketwas 2016 2017. The feds were
quite concerned, they came inthey intervened with some
measures to tighten credit be20. And then you also saw these
sort of regional approaches likethe foreign buyer taxes, right.
And, and when I look at themarket, then and then I looked

(08:12):
at it again, in 2019. It's like,the market was tighter in most
metros across the country in2019, than it was in 2016 2017.
But prices weren't reflecting ityet. And so I was saying to my
clients, like, Look, this isgoing to change, or we're going
to see a big move to the upside.
And that was my story kind ofright through 2019. And it's
funny, once you sort of turn alittle more, I don't know,

(08:32):
optimistic isn't the right word.
But once you just kind of saylike, T's you know, I feel like
the bias here is gonna be to theupside. All of a sudden, you're
not as popular in the media,right? And everyone wants a
sensational soundbite.

If it bleeds, it leads.

That's exactly right. And so heading into the
pandemic, I think most peopledon't realize that the housing
market across the country wasalready way tighter than it was
in the period of 2016 2017. Andyou can measure that in a couple
different ways. You can look atthe sales to new listings ratio,
or you can look at it in termsof months of inventory. So how
much inventory is on the market?
How many months would it take tosell that inventory? And those
are the two main go to measuresof supply and demand. And both

(09:10):
of those were absolutelyscreaming that prices, were
gonna have a big move. And sothat was the setup in early 2020
pre pandemic, right. And then sothen along comes this pandemic,
as you said, you get theseenormous job losses. But what
was interesting, and I thinkwhat people missed in the early
days, is that, overwhelmingly,those job losses were in the

(09:32):
lowest income tiers. Right. Andso I did some some work on that
I put a note out for my clientsjust looking at Hey, how was the
Canadian economy or the Canadianhousing market did so well in
spite of the economy. And itturns out that if you sort of
segment that the jobs by incomeband, you find that the highest
40% of employees in the countrythat earn the equivalent of kind

(09:54):
of $30 or more employmentdeclined by
4% Peak to trough. So in kind ofFebruary, March, it had
recovered by June. And then bythe end of the year was 10%,
higher than pre pandemic levels.
And so all of the job losses andit's sort of intuitive. Now, of
course, it was all in the kindof retail and hospitality
sector, right. And so that wasthe sector that was hit them

(10:17):
that by far the hardest. And thedirty secret of this pandemic is
that if you're in that top half,even of the income spectrum,
this is like, this is the besttime for you, right? In terms of
your finances, you've got theseultra low interest rates, and
you've got nowhere to spend yourmoney. Right, you're you're
probably on affected you're ableto work from home. And and so

(10:39):
it's it's the unfortunatereality is that this pandemic is
way more affected the lowerincome tiers than it did even
kind of the upper half. And thatmatters a lot for housing
demand, of course, because ifyou're in those lower income,
chances are you may not havebeen active in the resale market
to begin with. Right. And so itwas this, it was this kind of,
you know, storm for the lowerincome tiers, but it ended up

(11:01):
being kind of a tailwind fordemand for the higher end of the
market. And that was missed inthe early days of the pandemic,
that jives with what I've beenseeing in terms of even just
like on the ground, looking atthe types of businesses that,
you know, have the for lease orsale signs up on the windows,
the big office towers, everyonewent and started working from
home, those workers themselvesare at home. And they didn't

(11:24):
suffer a drop in income. Butthey also lost the ability to
spend a lot of money on travel,and entertainment and other
things. So to your point, thepeople who were not in a
position to buy homes in thefirst place, those were the ones
who got deeply affected, andthose who were maybe on the
margin, things got a lot easierfor them. So that's certainly

(11:47):
one sort of aspect to look at.
But more specifically, I want totalk about the decline in labor
income that you saw in the data.
And then the government'sresponse in terms of all the
different support programs thatwe saw. And I want, I want to
get your sense as to the levelof support that was provided
relative to the labor, incomeloss. And then I want to know,

(12:10):
how that compares to othercountries around the world.
Absolutely. So I think theresponse to this pandemic is
going to be studied and debatedfor many years, right? And then
there's a saying that you kindof you can't criticize the
outcome of Battlefield surgery.

(12:31):
It's like, it's, it's anemergency. It's like, the shits
about to hit the fan, you haveto do something, even if it's
wrong, right? You just you haveto do something, right. And
there's no question that thegovernment had to step in and
provide some very aggressiveincome support, because we were
staring at an economic abyss.
And so they did the governmentin Canada stepped in, and they,

(12:52):
to your point, they offset lostlabor income by a factor of
three, and in the secondquarter. And so to put that in
context, so if we look at, youknow, I look at real GDP, year
over year, we saw the steepestdecline on record, and in the
second quarter of 2020. And yet,you had this weird phenomenon

(13:15):
where household disposableincome growth surged to the
upside. So you had the economycontracting by the steepest on
record, but yet householdincomes growing by 16%, you're
like, well, that, that neverhappens in a recession. Right?
And then so we hear like, Whatin the world is really going on
here. And so during that secondquarter, which was that main

(13:35):
lockdown quarter in 2020, thatreal scary quarter, when
everyone's just like no one wasleaving their house, we had no
idea what we were dealing withWas this the plague like it was
just that real freaky quarter.
And what we found is that lostlabor income, so labor income
across the economy declined byabout $20 billion sequentially
in that quarter. But then if welook at government transfers to
households, they increase byabout 70 billion. So another way

(13:58):
of saying is that for everydollar of lost labor income in
that quarter, the the governmentoffset it with $3 of transfers,
right. And so when we comparethat across countries, it is
perhaps the most aggressiveresponse from any developed
country. And we can see this ifwe look at things like the the

(14:18):
change in government deficitsbetween 2019 and 2020. When we
look across countries, mostadvanced economies, of course,
saw their deficits blow up,generally, you saw kind of a 10
percentage points swing, right.
So if they were running a minus1%, Deaf budget balance in 2019,
all of a sudden, it was likeminus 11%. Like this was across

(14:40):
the board every every countrydid this. And so the average
cost of bass comes with about10%, Canada was closer to 20%.
We saw in almost 20% swing inthe budget balance for 2019 to
2020. And that is the highestamong developed countries. So
just to dive a little bit deeperon that, did you take a look

And, you know, what was the base that some of
those other countries arecoming? Were they more deeply
indebted than Canada? Or wasCanada, you know, point to your
into that scale as well pre theexpansion in balance sheets.

Yeah. So this is just looking at sort of the the
projected deficit, or just theoverall balance the budget
balance one year versus thenext. And so Canada, when we
were in 2019, we're sort ofheading for like a one to 2%
budget deficit, and then all ofa sudden it exploded end up
being 20%. And so yeah, Canadawas running a deficit most

(15:33):
countries were, but certainlythe magnitude of the increase in
the in the deficit was farlarger in Canada than it was in
other countries. And, you know,we can debate it's hard to know
whether that was the rightapproach. At this point. I think
there's some valid questionsaround whether some of the early
iterations of the income supportprograms were targeted

(15:54):
sufficiently. Right. So you hadthese stories of these high
school kids on serb, right, thatwouldn't have been working
anyways. But they're able tocollect serve. And they if
there's stuff like that, you'relike, wow, maybe. But again,
it's hard to criticize it,because in the moment, what was
desperately needed was money outthe door and into households as
quickly as possible. And thegovernment to the credit,

(16:16):
absolutely delivered that. Andso we really won't know for a
couple more years how this playsout, because it could turn out
that Canada ends up with a muchmore durable recovery than some
of these other countries thatdidn't spend as aggressively I
don't know, I don't know. ButBut, you know, it's important to
frame this properly, that Canadadid so well, in, in large part

(16:36):
because the government blew outtheir balance sheet to support
households.

As you mentioned, normally, during a
recession, people dip intosavings, and they may also tap
into credit. So let's take alook at what happened with
credit. And let's break it downto obviously, with the the rise
in house prices, you wouldexpect that, you know, people
have to borrow more money tosupport these incredible
valuations that that changed,like the in terms of changing

(17:00):
valuations. You know, thestories that I know, you've seen
40 offers on a house biddingwars where, you know, the the
sale price is $400,000, overasking. And the second highest
bid was 100,000. Over asking. Sowe could talk about the blind
process and all that stuff. Butlet's first talk about the

(17:22):
dynamics of the different typesof credit like mortgage credit.

Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right. So this was a
strange recession in so manyways, right. So we already
talked about this weirdphenomenon where you had massive
declines in GDP, but thisincredible rise in household
disposable income, right? Youdon't see that during
recessions. And as youmentioned, you generally see an
impairment household balancesheets, during recessions on

(17:47):
aggregate, you see people drawdown savings, you see, credit
card, delinquencies go up, yousee mortgage delinquencies go
up, like all these things thatyou would normally expect to see
during a recession. We saw noneof that in the last year. And in
fact, it was the exact opposite.
And so when we look at whathappened, consumers, I'm
hesitant to, to frame it thisway. Because I don't want to

(18:07):
minimize the reality that thishas been a terrible pandemic for
a lot of people. But when welook across, in aggregate, all
consumers in Canada, householdsactually came out of the
recession in better shape thanthey went in. Right. And again,
that's not to, in any waydiminish how terrible it's been
for certain households. But forexample, we look at the
household savings rate, itabsolutely exploded. In the

(18:30):
early days of the pandemic, wesaw household savings rate
almost hit 30%. It's still inthe teens, right? And for
context, that was about one anda half percent pre pandemic,
right? If we look at things likejust excess deposit sitting in
personal checking accounts atcharter banks, and we look at
the trend pre pandemic, we'reabout $100 billion above that

(18:53):
pre pandemic trend. So there'sjust so much cash sitting in
consumer, it just in checkingaccounts waiting to be spent,
right. And what the other thingthat happened that's really
interesting is you had thissteep decline in non mortgage,
consumer credit, and especiallycredit card balances. And this
makes sense, of course, when welook at how much cash just

(19:16):
sitting in checking accounts, ifyou're earning whatever point 2%
in a checking account, butyou're paying 20% on your credit
card. It makes sense to pay offthe credit card, right? And
we've seen that in like thedecline in in credit card
balances has been stunning. Sowhen I look at chartered banks
and their holding their creditcard loans here in Canada,

(19:38):
they've declined by over 15%year over year, which is not
what you'd expect to see and sooverall consumer credit is down
over 2% compared to last year atthis time.

Do you factor in the rise in the explosion in the
new buy now pay later companiesbecause what I've seen from from
some of the data from cards defythe amount of people who are
using buy now pay later Serviceshas exploded in terms of number
of transaction sizes oftransactions. And it's in some
cases, it's an alternative tocredit card usage. But in other

(20:12):
cases, people are using creditcards for the buy now pay later
transactions as well. So justcurious, have you looked yet
into the buy now pay laterspace?

Well, that's a great question. I that's
actually really a few pointsthat I do need to dig into that
I, my thoughts on that. And Icould be wrong. So I will look
into this. But my initialthought would be that that's one
of those segments of consumercredit that is growing rapidly,
but it's still a relativelysmall portion of the overall
pie. That's my bias on that. ButI could be wrong. So I will look

(20:44):
into that, because that couldabsolutely be something
interesting to to look at. Buteven setting that portion aside,
right? What we know is that whenwe look across all credit
products, that households arepaying in Canada, all borrowing
mortgages, credit cards, autos,etc. And I would assume all that

(21:05):
payday loan that that's stillregistered as as consumer
credit, and I've got to thinkthe Bank of Canada aggregates
that as well. You know, overall,non mortgage, consumer credit
has been falling in Canada, Imean, it just makes sense for
most people, when they'resitting on the sort of excess
cash that we see. And they'reearning almost nothing on it,

(21:25):
they'll use that to pay offtheir high interest credit card,
or they use that to fundconsumption. And that's pretty
much what we've been seeing,right. And so just to get back
to kind of this the story here,like we came out of this
recession with households inmuch better shape than they went
in, and we can measure that byvarious different metrics,
right? So household savingsrate, way up cash on balance
sheets way up, the debt serviceratio fell sharply, right. So

(21:47):
this is the share of householdincome that goes towards
servicing debt. And when weentered the recession, we were
at 30. Year highs, right. Sothat was a real concern, we had
a lot of debt, we had a lot of alot of income being diverted to
support that debt. And then yougo through the recession, you
have interest rates, plenty ofhouseholds pay off high
interest, credit card debt, youcome out the other side, and the

(22:10):
household debt service ratio isway lower. And so it's this
really strange thing wherehouseholds have done better
coming through the recession inaggregate in aggregate, right.
And we see this and things likeconsumer insolvencies, consumer
service has been one of thewildest charts through this
whole pandemic, because it wasrising quite sharply, right

(22:30):
through 2019, into early 2020.
And then it's just like it hit awall and it's plunged and
through most of the pandemic, itwas down almost 50% year over
year. Wow. And I've got thischart that you probably saw, I
got this chart, we kind ofannotate. Here's the financial
crisis. And you see consumerinsolvencies spiked during the
financial crisis. And they'reup, you know, 40 50% year over
year, and then you get the COVIDcrisis. And it's literally the

(22:51):
mirror opposite they theyabsolutely plunge.

Yeah, it's like completely upside down. And I
know that part of it was, youknow, the courts were closed,
and you actually couldn't havecreditors going after people.
But part of it, I think, isexplained by like you said, the
improvement to householdconditions, higher savings,
mortgage deferrals, they werekind of saved by you know, the

(23:15):
support lower interest rates andwhat have you. So

it actually Preet let me jump back in because you
make a good point, the mortgagedeferrals, we can't overlook how
significant that was in terms ofjust freeing up spending power
or saving power for forhouseholds, right. And at peak
in June, we had over 70, almost70% of all mortgages in Canada,

(23:40):
were in some form of paymentdeferral, right. And so when you
think about the monthly paymentsthat would normally be going
out, and now all of a suddenthey're not going out and you're
instead able to save that arediverted elsewhere. That went a
long way. I mean, that ended upbeing there was a lot of concern
in the early days. Because whenwe look back at the financial
crisis, we go back even furtherto kind of the late 80s, early

(24:02):
90s. We saw mortgage deferralsin Canada never really ever got
up above 1% total, like never.
And here we were with 16% of allmortgages seeking deferral,
apparently because of, of cashflow issues. Now, it turns out,
with benefit of hindsight, thatvast majority of those were
taking more out of caution or,or convenience than absolute

(24:26):
necessity. But who cares? It wasone of those programs that was
phenomenally successful. Itdidn't cost anyone anything, the
taxpayers weren't on the hookfor that. The banks by and
large, just kind of keptchugging along and making their
their money and, and so that'sone of those programs that I
suspect every time that we'regoing to go through meaningful
recession. Now you're going tosee banks and the government

(24:47):
cooperate on something like thatbecause it was just so
effective.

To your point. A lot of people took advantage of
these programs out of anabundance of caution more than
they had to yeah They weren'treally caught between a rock and
a hard place. Because I think,you know, there were early
predictions as to Wow, look atall these mortgage deferrals.
And when these programs stop,things are going to be awful.
But that didn't reallymaterialize at all did it?

Well, it didn't.
And it's funny because I thinkany rational observer who saw
16% of mortgages and deferral,right, which was, by the way,
which was multiples of what wesaw in the US, anyone looking at
that had to have a level ofconcern, right, but it's just
ignorant disagree. I mean, Iknow there are people in the
mortgage industry like nothing,but like, really any rational

(25:32):
observer would look at that belike, wow, this is really
concerning. Right. But I'll tellyou that by the summer, it was
very clear to me, I should saysomething by kind of the fall,
the early fall, I did some workon it. And we just said, Okay,
let's do a hypothetical, right,let's just say that every single
one of these mortgages that arestill in deferral, right,
because they started to rolloff, you saw the numbers
decline. And so by that bySeptember, you can't see Okay,

(25:54):
we got X number of mortgages indeferral. If the banks were to
seize all of those tomorrow, andlist them all for sale, what
does that do to the marketbalance? And what was what was
stunning is we're sitting atthat time at 30 year lows in
active investor inventory acrossthe country. And had you taken
all of those mortgages that werein deferral and instead

(26:18):
foreclose on them tomorrowlisted them for sale? You're
still at a 20 year low in activelisting. Wow.
And so at that point, it's justlike, Okay, well, we can safely
say that this just doesn'tmatter. Right, there is no
deferral cliff, if there is it'sgoing to be absorbed into this
incredibly strong resale market.
And so I very quickly abandonedthat as sort of a meaningful

(26:38):
trigger for any sort of pricecorrection.

And with housing prices accelerating so much. And
I know years ago, years ago,you're banging the drum saying,
hey, people need to payattention to the growth in key
locks. And just how that isexpanded so much. Have you seen?
Or do you have data on what'shappened with home equity lines
of credit? During the pandemic?

Yeah, they really haven't moved. It's been really
interesting to watch. Actuallyhe locked balances are actually
I just looked at this recently,they're about 1.3% year over
year, which is nothing. Thereality is that it's just far
cheaper to do a refinance onyour mortgage right now than it
is to do a HELOC. And so it'shard to know how much Home

(27:26):
Equity people are pulling out oftheir homes. I suspect it's a
lot. But we can't capture thatclearly in the HELOC data. But
But I will tell you this much.
If we look at single familyhouse prices across the country,
they're up $180,000 compared tolast year at this time, wow,
that's not using the averagenumber. Because that's sort of
skews based on the shiftingcomposition that's using the the

(27:48):
house price index, the benchmarkprice which sort of tries to
control for change. So I mean,that's a real number as far as
I'm concerned. So people shouldquit their jobs and just buy and
sell houses and they'll makemore money. That's right. I
mean, that's, that'sunfortunately, I think what
we're gonna start seeing, we'realready seeing it to some
extent, you get this bizarremisallocation of human and

(28:10):
financial capital during thesecrazy booms. But my point is,
that is a ton of home equity.
That's a record amount in termsof a one year growth. And it's
stunning to me that he lockshaven't moved. Really right. And
it tells me actually that ifanything, there's there's
significant more room for peopleto borrow and, and to support

(28:32):
big ticket expenditures in theeconomy.

Yeah, it does sound like you know, if the
reopenings the the removal oflockdowns, even if that is, you
know, sort of diffused, andthere isn't one point in time,
it feels like the household isready to do their part in terms
of spending when they can, whichbodes well for the economy.

Yeah, I think that's right. I do agree with
you completely. The setup is setup completely for a very strong
back half of the year, reopeningthe economy, if anything, the
risk is that we see inflationrun a little hot and it spooked
the bond market. That's the onething I'm concerned about is
that I do think you're gonnahave a bit of an inflation
scare. And you could see bondmarkets, the bond yields start

(29:12):
to really move, which thenaffects mortgage rates. I mean,
it's it's it's, if anything,it's the big risk right now.

Some of the other factors, population
growth. Yeah. And I know thatthis is something again, you've
brought to the front burner fora lot of people and you said,
Hey, take a look at populationand factor that into your supply
and demand analyses. And duringthe pandemic, we saw that
population growth really didn'toccur to the same levels that it

(29:40):
did before. But the nature ofthe slowing of that growth and
the sources of that had animpact on different parts of the
market. So can you walk usthrough what happened with
different types of populationgrowth and why that translated
into you know, the dynamics wesaw with house prices and So
rent.

Yeah, absolutely.
So this is, I continue to thinkthe population growth dynamics
in Canada are one of the mostmisunderstood drivers of the
economy. Right. And I, and it'sstill I banged my head against
the wall every time I seesomeone draw a straight line
between government immigrationprojections, and population
growth, right? You still today,I mean, we've got the government

(30:22):
talking about 400, the target of400,000 immigrants for 2021,
which is a record and thenpeople are saying, well, you're
gonna have massive population,but you don't understand the
inner workings of populationdynamics. Okay. And so I'll walk
people through that quick, I'vespent a lot of time looking at
this. But But bottom line, if wego back to 2019, at peak, we had

(30:43):
population in Canada, growing byalmost 600,000, year over year,
we just an enormous number, wecould, you can't build enough
housing, to house that manypeople, right. And if anything,
I would argue that there wassort of a policy, I don't call
it a policy error. But there's amismatch there, where if you're

(31:05):
going to target massivepopulation growth like that you
need buy in from municipalitiesto be able to house everyone,
right. But it's important tolook at what actually drove that
population growth, because youneed to break out population
growth into three buckets. Okay,you need to look at what's
happening with net immigration.

(31:27):
And that's the one that gets allthe headlines, right. So this is
like, when you hear Canada talkabout 400,000. Target.
That's how many people that wantto bring here on a permanent
basis. But then you lose people.
I know, it's hard for people toCanadians, to think but there
are people that emigrate out ofCanada, and they'll go to the US
or go to other places. And it'snot a small amount, right? In a
normal year, it'll be anywherekind of 100 150,000. So that

(31:50):
400,000, we'll probably end upnetting out somewhere around
250. Right. And that's, that'sthe big driver. But then you've
got two other elements as well.
One is natural increase, whichis like, births minus deaths.
And that's plunging, right? It'sfunny, there was sort of a joke
in the early days of pandemic,like, oh, man, there's going to

(32:10):
be the COVID, baby boom, you getall these people locked up with
nothing to do, it's like, andthe opposite has happened. We've
seen birth rates plunge, right.
And that's been an ongoing trendfor decades. But bottom line
that's falling sharply, and youmight add, you know, 60,000,
year over year from that goingforward. But the wildcard and
the point that I've beenhammering on is this group

(32:31):
called non permanent residents.
And these are foreign students.
These are work permit holders,refugees. These are people who
come to Canada, but they're nothere on a permanent basis, they
have not yet been grantedpermanent residency. And that's
a rotating door, you have a lotof them coming into here, you
have a bunch of leaving. And soit leads to these wild swings in
that number. And to put somecontext on it at peak in 2019,

(32:54):
that one group was adding200,000 to the headline
population. Today, that group isminus 100,000. Okay, which is
exactly what I said, Whathappened we hit when we get into
a recession, right. Now, to goback, we look at the headline,
population growth rate, we hitalmost 600,020 19. Fast forward

(33:17):
to mid 2020. record low we'dnever added so few people, the
total population was less than150,000. year over year. Right.
And so if you were just to lookat that one chart that, wow,
that's hugely bearish forhousing. Right? It's 150,000 is
nothing right, when we're usedto averaging kind of
300 400,000. But it gets back tothe to the point well, what was

(33:40):
it that caused the populationjust to fall so sharply? It was
the fact that you had a pile ofthese non permanent residents
leave? And you had very few comehere, right. And so you ended up
with that cohort, drag theoverall population growth down?
Well, then you go, well, whomakes up those cohorts? Are they
buyers? Are they renters? And byand large, they're renters. It's

(34:01):
foreign. Like I said, it'sforeign students is temporary
workers. And so if you justlooked at the population growth
rate, you'd say, Wow, that'sreally bad for housing. But in
reality, it's really bad for therental market, not for the
resale market. And we saw thisto some extent, in places like
Toronto where we saw your condorents in the downtown core fell
about 20% from peak levels, asyou sort of get further away

(34:23):
from the big city centers, youget less and less of an impact
on rents, but when overall andalmost all metros have have
softened, and you've seenvacancy rates rise, right. And
so, you know, again, this is anissue for the rental market was
not an issue for the resalemarket. And by the way, I'm
quite comfortable saying we'renot going back to peak
population levels for quite afew years. But for a number of

(34:45):
reasons that we can walk throughbut you know, anyone that's
drawing a straight line betweenthese headline immigration
targets and total populationgrowth is completely missing the
boat, and I think it's gonnamatter for the rental market. I
do think we're gonna have youknow, a bit of a shock rental
market for a couple of yearshere for not just because
population was gonna be weak,but but also because you've got
just a ton of new rental supplybeing built.

Let's also talk about consumer preferences. And
so one of the other things thatwe've been seeing in the
headlines is, with work fromhome, people are thinking
differently about the spacesthat they live in. They are
thinking differently about, youknow, especially early on, when
we had no idea how long theserestrictions would last people

(35:29):
were talking about, oh, a secondwave, oh, the third wave or
potentially a fourth wave and soon and so forth. And varying
levels of ineptitude, atdifferent levels of government
in terms of handling gunrestrictions and lockdowns and
responding to the data. A lot ofpeople said, Well, you know
what, I'm going to move out ofthe city or I want a bigger
space. And so what does the dataactually say?

Why it absolutely bears that out? Right. So I
just, I mean, actually wasinteresting, the Bank of Canada
had a great chart on this, andthey looked at the price
increase on dwellings, as yousort of drew concentric rings
around city centers, right. Andwhat they found is, as you got
further out, the price increasehas actually accelerated. Right.

(36:13):
And this is consistent with whatI was saying. I mean, at one
point, and I might butcher thenumbers, but I'll sort of be
directionally right or in theright ballpark here. But at one
point when I looked across thereal estate boards, right across
the country, right, and I thinkI looked about 30 Regional real
estate boards, you had like 20of them that we're seeing host
prices increase in excess of30%. year over year, right. It's

(36:36):
not average, this is like houseprice index. Right. So so you
know, compositionally adjusted.
And of those 20. There were onlylike two that were top 10 metro
areas. And so you had all ofthese kind of like the cottage
countries and all the, you know,anywhere where you're you're
sort of further away from thefrom the big cities, prices were
exploding, absolutely exploding.

(36:57):
And you're absolutely right, itwas a preference for lower
density, single family, housing,right. And even if you just look
at, let's say, the GTA, and yousegmented into condos in the 416
condos and the nine to fivesingle family 416 single family
905. And you look at the changein sales rate through 2020. It's

(37:19):
very interesting is by the endof the year, we ended up
overall, home sales were upsomewhere about 7%. year over
year, at the end of the year, upthat much. By By the way, that's
amazing that we ended 2020, upto 2019. That alone is crazy.
But then when you looked acrosssegments, it was like well,
condo sales in the 406 were downsubstantially. And I probably
butchered the number call itlike 15% year over year, condo

(37:41):
sales in the nanofiber down abit single family sales in the
416 were like we're up a touch.
And then the single family salesin the 95. Were up massively.
Right. And so we saw this rateacross the country, single
family prices were acceleratedthe demand for single family was
huge. And you had this mismatchbetween what we've been building
and what the demand suddenly wasright? If you look at housing

(38:03):
stocks over the last few years,the last 10 years, we've seen a
consistent decline in singlefamily house starts and has been
replaced by a huge surge in bothcondo and purpose built rental
construction. And people reallydon't realize how much purpose
built rentals have ever run up.
And it's it's it's stunning.
Really. I mean, you look atwhat's under construction right

(38:23):
now across the country, you'vegot almost 100,000 purpose built
rentals, you're less than60,000, single family homes,
right? And you say well, what'sin demand right now it's the
single family homes and therentals are actually a little
soft. And so it you ended upwith a situation where the
supply and the demand werecompletely out of whack. And,
and consequently you have thesehuge booms in these, these

(38:44):
smaller cities. And I'm not sureyet the big question for me is
what happens going forward? I'mtorn on this one I I don't think
the cities are dead by anymeans. I really don't buy that
narrative. So I do think you'regoing to start to see migration
back to the city cores as thingsreopen maybe not right away, but
eventually. But there's a partof me also the snake cheese. You

(39:07):
know, you got Starling comingup. You got people able to
access internet from afar, whichthey never used to be able to in
some of these smaller areas.
Like maybe there is like asecular kind of tailwind to this
as well. So I'm sort of torn onthis. There's I don't think
there's any way we're going tobe here next year talking about
you know, I don't know OwenSound where we're I'm quite

(39:30):
familiar with being up almost50% year over year. That's
absurd. I mean, just completelyabsurd.

The conversation with Ben robidoux continues in
just a minute. But first, a fewthank yous to listeners who left
comments on Apple podcasts.
Thank you to funk love 82 whohas graciously offered to buy me
a drink and hey, the COVID-19lockdowns are lifted, hit me up.
Also thank you to a girl and agarden for your kind comments as
well. And to everyone who leavesratings and comments on Apple

(40:08):
podcasts, I appreciate them. AndI do read them all. I produce
the podcast for you, thelisteners, and you know, I keep
wrestling with whether or not torun ads on the podcast. But this
is Episode 97. And so far, it'sbeen ad free. So you know, I
don't do this for the money. Andfor now, I really don't have
anything to sell you or servicesto provide? You know, come to

(40:30):
think of it. Why do I post this?
doesn't make any sense. But Idigress. Now, let's get back to
the conversation with Ben rabiu,shall we?

(40:53):
Yeah, so I think you know, oneof the one of the big questions
that I've been hearing from alot of people that is Canadian
housing has been somewhatinvincible, and no one would
have thought pre pandemic thatwe would see what has transpired
in the last, you know, 16months, what have you in terms
of the price acceleration, justthe sheer increase in prices? If

(41:15):
you are one of those people whois potentially was in the
market, and now maybe yoursituation is a little bit
better, and you're thinking, youknow, what I'm in a position to
buy. But I've just seen thesemassive short term acceleration
to the point where everyone'stalking about people are asking,
government should intervene waysin the Bank of Canada doing

(41:35):
more, everyone's askingquestions. If you are to give
advice to someone who's in thisposition, do you tell them to?
Because this is what they'rethinking in the back of the
mind? Do I wait for acorrection? Or do I just get in
now for the fear of missing out?
Because this is my last chance?
What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I'm going to say what I've been saying for
years on your show. This is a Ican't give blanket financial
advice. And everything's gonnadepend on your own personal
circumstances, your own, youknow, balance sheet and income
expectations. But what I wouldsay is, if it makes sense for
you financially, to buy now, andyou can buy and not, and still

(42:15):
have some buffering your budget,do it. If you can't, it's
probably going to be a prettygood time to rent for a little
while the rental rental market.
I mean, I don't buy for amoment. I mean, look, rents have
bottomed in Toronto, and I don'tthink they're gonna go
dramatically lower by any means.
But we're not snapping back to2019 levels anytime soon, it's

(42:37):
gonna be a long, slow grind toget back to those peak levels,
as far as I'm concerned. Andthat bodes quite well, for
renters for a little while. I'mjust not going to slick. It gets
back to something we've talkedabout for a while. And it's it's
gotten even crazier. I mean,when you look at just how driven
the Canadian economy is, by thishousing boom, it's just I mean,
it's hard to wrap your headaround me if we look at just

(42:58):
residential investment, which isnew housing, construction,
renovations and ownershiptransfer costs, which is things
like realtor commissions, andyour legals and stuff like that.
That alone is about nine and ahalf percent of GDP, which is
absurd compared to any othercyclical peak in the country. I
mean, any other previous cyclepeaked around 7%, the US at the

(43:21):
peak of their bubble, was just alittle over 6%. And we are so
far above anything that looksremotely normal. That component
of GDP alone has been half ofthe economic growth since 2018.
It's been completely absurd,right? We now spend three times
more on realtor commissions,generally will say auditor

(43:45):
transfer cost, but primarilyrealtor commissions, then all
businesses across the countryspend on research and
development. I mean, it's it'scrazy, right? It's crazy. And,
you know, there was a stunningchart that they saw from the
OECD, where if you look at allinvestment across the economy,
right, so residential investmentis one component, but you've got

(44:05):
businesses spending, moneyinvesting, government investing.
And so overall, it's what wecall gross fixed capital
formation. And if you look atWell, what share of gross fixed
capital formation is justresidential housing. In Canada,
it's about 40%. Okay, and whenyou say, Well, that doesn't like
what does that mean? Right?
Well, to put it in context, ifwe look at all OECD countries,

(44:25):
and we will look we go back to2000. So you look over the last
20 years, there are only beenthree examples of countries that
have gotten above that level.
And it was Greece, Ireland andSpain, all in the mid 2000s. All
of them after that suffered justenormous economic fallout from

(44:46):
those housing booms. And and thereason is fairly simple. It's
that in order to have theeconomic productivity and the
growth that you need to supportprices at these levels, we need
businesses investing in Thingsthat are gonna make us more
productive over time. And we'renot seeing that in Canada right
now. And so I don't know whenthis matters. But eventually it

(45:08):
will matter, right? Like, itreally will. Like you can't just
create this economy of justprogressively buying and selling
more expensive housing to eachother.

When you think about it, there's there's some
people who think, you know, I'vegot the entrepreneurial itch, I
can try and go and get a loanfrom a bank to start a business.
Or I can just go and startbuying houses and flipping them.
And that seems so muchrefractive. Well, this is my

point, right?
Because these housing booms, notonly do they end up with a
misallocation of financialcapital, right, like, like you
sort of say, you to your point,like, Is it easier now to get
wealthy by building up abusiness and investing in the
business over time? Andeventually, you know, getting
cash flow from that andeventually selling it? Or is it
easier today to just leverage asmuch as you can get the biggest

(45:52):
mortgage, you can't buy thebiggest house? You can? And you
get to ride that tax free?
Right? I mean, like I said, theaverage person made $180,000,
just sitting on their housedoing nothing for the last year,
how many business owners can sayand that's tax free, right. And
so when you go through thesebooms, not only do you end up
with a misallocation offinancial capital, but human

(46:13):
capital as well, right, like howmany people that would have been
in these sort of STEM fields areout there trying to, you know,
create things that actually makeour lives better, or instead out
there flipping homes? Like Idon't know, I don't know, but
it's not zero, right. Like thatis definitely happening to some
extent. So it's just not goodfor the long term. But but but,
you know, the question isalways, When is that going to

(46:34):
matter? And the point that Iwould make is, it's not going to
matter this year, I, you know,you look at the numbers, and
housing is just still so tight.
Right. Like I said, the consumeris in better shape than they
were going into the recession.
And so this is gonna be a storyfor another year. But but we
haven't seen the end of thatstory. Right. This still is
gonna matter at some point inCanada.

You mentioned something that I have a question
about, and that is realtorcommissions and other other
costs. But specifically, withthe the run up in prices, is
there not enough competition? Imean, have you seen Commission's
like the rates have dropped atall? Or? Or are they relatively
static given all this housingactivity?

That's a great question. I don't have as much
clean insight into that. That'dbe a good question for one of
the guys in the space that aresort of an honest, transparent
operator, john Pacelle, us areone of those guys. I haven't
seen that there's nothing thatjumps out. What I would say is,
the realtor profession stillcontinues to attract a pile of

(47:37):
people. It's still growing inCanada, even as home sales are
rising. And so I I feel likeit's still a very competitive
market. And I suspect that whenyou look at how many realtors
are and I'd have to look at, I'mgoing to block my numbers again.
But I was looking at this nottoo long ago. I mean, it was
funny I was looking at, therewas this article that came out
in the US where they were like,Oh my god, there's more houses,

(47:59):
or sorry, there's more realtorsin their homes for sale in the
US. Isn't that crazy? It waslike there was you know, 1.2
realtors for every one house forsale. And I looked at Toronto.
And the numbers were like, therewere like seven or eight
realtors for every house forsale. Like it wasn't even close.
So I messaged I, you know, Istarted tweeted back at some of
these guys that were talkingabout it. And they were just
like, Oh, my God, that's great.
So I feel like it's still one ofthose things where, you know,

(48:23):
the top 10% of realtors arestill making the vast majority
of the money and you've got along tail of people that are
sort of in the business tryingto get going. And you know, it's
quite competitive to get inthere. But to be honest,

I don't know. Do you think that anyone needs to
intervene in the housing market?

Well, there's a great question there. So should
they? Yes, yes. But will theyknow? Right? Well, let's think
about I just said how importantthe economy is for the housing
market is for the economy, we'reheading into what's likely going
to be an election year are notheading into we're in an
election year, probably later inthe fall. No one's gonna step on

(49:03):
housing right before anelection, especially with the
economy's still relativelyfragile. But you give a
government majority and yet ifprices are still crazy like
this, yeah, all bets are offright now. What should they do?
Well, I think there's, there'scertain low hanging fruit that
just makes sense, right? Sorollout of a national beneficial
ownership registry, we shouldknow if it's a numbered company

(49:25):
buying a bunch of residentialhomes. Who owns that? Is it a
foreign national? Is it is itsomeone here? What like we
should be able to know thatright. So that one makes sense.
I do think the the move to sortof curb foreign speculation
makes a lot of sense. Hard toknow how much that really moves
the needle, but but to someextent, that makes sense. Seeing
more municipalities sort of tryto curb some of the short term

(49:47):
rentals could make sense and tryto bring some supply back into
the market. There's lots of sortof little things. There's no
silver bullet, but there's a lotof small things that are like
Well, that's a no brainer. Likewhy don't we crackdown on
corruption and money laundering.
In all this, like, that's justlike, why wouldn't you do that?
Right? And so, you know, myapproach is just start with the
things that make sense and thatare easy and that are sort of
not hard to argue.

And and go from there, with the blind bidding
process be something that youwould say that needs to go? Or
do you think that it

will bills? Yeah, no, I think that will go. I
think it's got support fromreal, I think most people in the
industry recognize that it's alittle bit silly. Now, I want to
be clear. And so just so yourlisteners understand the blind
bidding process is just that,you know, you're competing on
these bids on this house, youdon't you may know how many
other bidders are there? Is heever other registered or at

(50:39):
least in Ontario and BC andother places you don't, you
don't even know how many peopleyou're up against. But in
Ontario, at least you got aregistered bid. And so you might
know, came up against sevenother bidders. But you have no
idea what they're actuallybidding, right. And so you end
up with these wild cases. And Ihear this from realtor contacts.
And like firsthand stories arelike, yeah, we had this house
for sale, the bids wereclustered in around the kind of,

(51:00):
you know, whatever, 1.1 millionmark, and then all of a sudden
one bid comes in at like 1.4.
It's like $300,000 above thenext bid. And that's insane. And
then all of a sudden that onebid creates the comps for
everything else in the area.
That makes no sense. And andthere's no reason why we can't
have just an automaticescalation clause in Canada, or

(51:22):
some version. And I know it getstricky, because you know,
there's more to an offer thanjust the price. Sometimes the
closing matters, sometimes theoffer, and you know that the
conditions matter. But it seemsto me the more transparency is
good, but I do want to cautionthat's not a silver bullet, we
can look at places likeAustralia, where they have
literally you stand outside andthis guy with a gavel and you
bid, right like like an auction.
Right? But it's, it's, it's astransparent as you can get, and

(51:45):
their housing market is insane.
So I don't think that this islike, you know, we implement
this one thing and alleverything is fixed rent, we
still need a lot more of singlefamily supply. That's, that's
ultimately what's going to beneeded to bring some balance to
the market.

Alright, you know, I'm going to wrap it up
there because you shared so muchinformation that I'm sure a lot
of people's heads are spinningalready. So I do want to spend
some time talking about your newventure because I think there's
a lot of people who would findvalue in this. So of course, you
had your you still have NorthCOVID visors, which is providing

(52:19):
research to institutionalclients. But now you've launched
this new company called edgerealty analytics. So tell me
about why you started thiscompany and what it does.

Yeah, thanks for asking. So edge realty
analytics. It's taking the samegeneral research approach as
North Cove advisors, but it'sdistilling it down to, to
suppose to create a productthat's specifically for Canadian
real estate professionals. Andso we're targeting mortgage
brokers, realtors, developers,anyone that's sort of associated

(52:53):
with that industry appraisers,insolvency trustees, whoever it
might be. And the idea here isjust to try to keep them as
smart as possible. And ahead ofthe competition. And my belief
is, you know, we're targetingkind of the top 1% producers we
want the smartest people, thepeople that appreciate being
really well informed. And sowhat we're doing is it's, it's,

(53:15):
it's a twice a monthpublication, we do a metro level
deep dive of all the latesttrends for select metros, and
Canada. And we do the edgereport, which is just kind of
stuff we're talking about here,all the latest sort of high
frequency relevant economic dataand some projections looking
forward. But what I'm reallyexcited about is, we're also
going to be gathering baselineinformation from subscribers,

(53:38):
right? And so we're gonna havesurveys that go out with these
reports. And we just want toknow from, let's say, mortgage
brokers, what's happening, thefinancing conditions from
realtors, hey, what's happeningwith foot traffic through open
houses, right, these types ofquestions, and it's going to
allow us to create some baselinedata that then feeds back into
my North Coast clients that theyvalue, but that will also be
available to the edge edgeanalytics clients. And so I

(54:01):
think that that's going to be atrend, you'll be able to know
like, well, what are mortgagebrokers in Alberta saying, What
are realtors in Ontario sayingand what you know, and so it's
gonna be some interesting datathat comes out of that. And the
last thing that we do is we docreate some infographics that
take some of these importantconcepts, put them in an
interesting format that thenbecome sort of shareable by

(54:22):
these real estate professionals,to just kind of get some
conversation going with theirclients and prospects. And so
that's all available, people cancheck it out edge analytics.ca,
you can sign up, it's very easyto cancel and fire us if you're
not if you're not fired up forwhat we're doing. But it's, it's
all on there.

I you know, I love that idea of getting, you
know, survey feedback from thepeople who are on the ground,
you know, you're in the thick ofthese transactions. I think
that's absolutely brilliant. Andsounds like it would be a very
valuable product for anyone inthat industry. And I can say
that, having talked to you overthe years seeing your research

(54:57):
over the years, it's absolutelytop notch Ben So good luck with
that endeavor. Yeah, let's givepeople information on where they
would go to to find out more.

Sure it's edge analytics.ca. And you can get
Have a look around there. So youcan sign up there, you'll be
added to a just emaildistribution. So you get
notified when new reports arewritten. But there are archive
reports already online. We'vegot some infographics already
live the the survey data isgoing to take a little while we
need to kind of build up somesome base data but but those

(55:27):
check those interactive, userfriendly graphs and and the raw
data will be available once wesort of have a few months worth
of, of information. So so allthose things happening. Dan,
your national treasure, I'mgonna put all those links in the
show notes. So if anyone wantsmore information on Ben on any
of his services, check out theshow notes. It'll have all the

(55:47):
links there. Ben, thank

you so much as always for being a guest on the
show. Thanks for having me. It'sgood to get to chat again.

(56:13):
If you want more personalfinance content, or you have
questions for me, or topicsuggestions for the podcast, you
can follow me on Twitter orInstagram and ask away. It's the
same handle in both cases atPreet Banerjee, I also have two
YouTube channels, you cansubscribe to my main channel
which covers personal financeand investing topics that are

(56:35):
global in scope, and a Canadianspecific channel as well. And
that is it for this episode.
thank you as always forlistening

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