Housing in the Toronto area has been even more insane than usual the last few months. Houses an hour away from downtown that were selling for ~850k in November 2021 were selling for $1.05M in January and February.
I live two hours from Toronto and a house in a bad area of town that I personally know was a crackhouse 2 years ago, sold for slightly under half a million and is getting gutted and renovated into a duplex.
Last time I was in the house, crackheads were shitting in buckets. Literally.
Is there a convincing explanation of why the US and Canadian markets behaved differently? Were Canadian banks smarter about what loans were issued? Not being a Canadian, most of the stories I hear about Canadian real estate are about international investment by the global rich -- is that a large enough share of market to support prices even through a recession?
Canadian economy is less diversified and overly reliant on housing as a component of GDP, so policy has been distorted by the housing market and the corruption/money laundering that goes along with it.
