A worrisome trend is developing in Canada’s housing market.
According to Hedgeye Housing analyst Josh Steiner:
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"We have reached a level of extreme, or froth, that is almost identical to where we were in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2005.” |
Look no further than Canada’s real estate brokers. The percentage of Canadian broker commissions as a percentage of GDP is nearly 2%. On a standard deviation basis, that is the highest level ever, at 3.13 in the first quarter of 2017. To put that into perspective, in the third quarter of 2005—the height of the housing bubble—the U.S. peaked on this same measure at 3.1 standard deviations.
You know what happened next.
This obviously has dire implications for the Canadian housing market. “When you think about bubbles, and Minsky moments, and you’re trying to put your finger on when things have reached a level of pure froth and excited state that actually becomes actionable, this is probably one of the single best measures,” Steiner says in the video above from a recent institutional conference call.
Caveat emptor.