China Home Sales Keep Falling as Top Officials Pledge Support
China’s home sales continued to fall in April, underscoring why top policymakers are stepping up efforts to revive the market.
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China’s home sales continued to fall in April, underscoring why top policymakers are stepping up efforts to revive the market.
China’s ruling Communist Party vowed to explore new measures to tackle a protracted housing crisis, which remains the biggest drag on the nation’s economy, and hinted at possible rate cuts ahead.
Distressed Korean builder Taeyoung Engineering & Construction Co. won support from creditors to begin restructuring its debt, after it had rattled local markets at the start of the year.
Britain’s housing-market recovery continued into March as mortgage approvals rose for a sixth month, Bank of England figures show.
A major state-owned landlord in Shanghai is offering to sell most of its office buildings for at least 30 billion yuan ($4.1 billion), people familiar said, underscoring the severity of the city’s commercial property downturn.
Dec 13, 2023
BNN Bloomberg
,Some home sellers are struggling to find buyers amid high mortgage costs, according to an economist who says Canada’s housing market is in the midst of “a very healthy correction.”
“We have more supply and less demand. This is becoming a buyers’ market – a buyers’ market with no buyers,” Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets, told BNN Bloomberg in a television interview.
Canada’s housing market is facing its “biggest test” since the 1991 recession as home sales drop but listings go up, Tal said.
“It's a very weak market,” he said Tuesday.
A dearth of listings had previously been propping prices up, Tal said, but listings have increased as high interest rates and other costs put pressure on homeowners.
He added that the housing market is in a “very healthy process.”
“Prices went up by 45 per cent over the course of breakfast during COVID-19, so what you're seeing now is a very healthy correction,” he said.
2024 OUTLOOK
James Laird, co-CEO of Ratehub.ca and president of CanWise mortgage lender, said he expects home prices will rise “modestly” in 2024 due to strong immigration numbers and an expected decline in interest rates.
In an emailed statement, Laird said the federal government’s 2024 target of 485,000 newcomers will continue to drive up housing demand.
SLOWING CONDO MARKET
Tal noted that Canada’s condo market is at the forefront of the current slowdown, with investors pulling out of the space rapidly -- while supply is still being built based on previous levels of demand.
“You have supply coming, but that's supply that started two years ago, not now, and the demand is going down,” he said.
“That's a sure-fire recipe for some slowing in the condo space, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.”
However, Tal cautioned that the slowdown in the near-term could discourage new builds and exacerbate Canada’s housing supply shortage, which will eventually drive prices up again.
“Two years from now when interest rates are (lower) and demand is there … the supply of new units will not be there,” he said.
“You don't have to be an economist to guess what will happen.”