Tag: Economic Growth

Watching the Crisis Unfold in Real Time

Housing Crisis 2

The economic fallout of the pandemic has garnered many shocking headlines, from concerns over how many restaurants may fail to the sheer number of people seeking unemployment insurance. Some of this is economic rubber necking, basking in the shocking and outlandish statistics generated by the lockdown and pandemic. The real test is still in front of us, determining what is temporary and what is permanent.

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From the New York Times

Concern that a number of restaurants may not reopen seems a reasonable fear, since lots of restaurants don’t survive normally. The impact to the airline industry will take years to work out, since you can’t just put all those planes back in the sky. It will take time to determine which routes should be brought back first, how many people want to fly and the planes themselves will need considerable maintenance before any of them roll down a runway.

But hope springs eternal. Eight weeks into the lockdown and efforts remain underway to gradually reopen the economy, and in time we will see which parts of our society (not economy, but society) need real help to get back on its feet.

I remain largely optimistic about the speed of the recovery once it’s safe to reopen, but remain cautious regarding existing problems within the Canadian economy that the pandemic will likely accelerate. Problems that were hidden just under the surface will find themselves in the cold light of day, and those problems will have repercussions, many of which will not be easy to predict.

As I wrote back in March (Will Covid-19 Make Real Estate Sick?)

“Problems rarely exist in isolation, and a problem’s ability to fester, grow and become malignant to the health of the wider body requires an interconnected set of resources to allow its most pernicious aspects to be deferred. In Canada the problem has been long known about, a high level of personal debt that has grown unabated since we missed the worst of 2008. What has allowed this problem to become wide ranging is a banking system more than happy to continue to finance home ownership, a real estate industry convinced that real estate can not fail, and a political class that has been prepared to look the other way on multiple issues including short term rental accommodation, in favour of rising property values to offset stagnant wages”

The issue of debt, real estate and short-term accommodations may be one issue undergoing a seismic shift in real time. The website MLS paints a surprisingly changed picture of the rental situation in downtown Toronto. Condominiums like the Ice Condos, located at the bottom of York Street were written about last year because so many of the units were being used for Airbnb. Today they offer hundreds of long-term rentals. The story is not limited to a few buildings either, much of the downtown condo scene, once reserved for Airbnb customers, has suddenly opened to long term accommodation.

Condo Rentals
A snapshot of available rental in May 2020 in downtown Toronto

For a city that only a few months ago was running perpetually short of rentals this change has been rapid, but its fair to assume that many of these landlords are hoping that the crisis will pass and that things will return to normal, with lucrative business in short term rentals resuming. The effect of all these new rentals is not happening in a vacuum. According to Rentals.ca in their May 2020 report, the price of condo rentals in locations like the Ice Condos have dropped by 10%.

Rental Change in TO
From Rentals.ca

The flip side of the real time change has been the sudden collapse in real estate sales. Reportedly year over year housing sales have dropped in Toronto by 67%, and new listing are down 64%. The selling and buying of houses has simply come to a grinding halt, and with it much of the city’s revenue from the land transfer tax, creating a secondary crisis within cities that have depended on the land transfer tax for revenue growth. In a cruel twist on a well-intentioned effort to get government finances under control, Toronto isn’t allowed to run a deficit, a constraint that has turned into a fatal weakness under the pandemic.

It is here that we should stop and consider a reality. In a few short weeks two major sectors of the Canadian economy within the city of Toronto (and Vancouver for that matter) have been radically altered. But this is also a period where we have seen the most government support and extensive economic intervention. Long term expectations have yet to shift. Airbnb hosts wish to remain Airbnb hosts. Homeowners hope to continue to use their houses to expand their financial footprint. But we should take a page from the city of Toronto reviewing its financial books, the real crisis has yet to truly unfold.

Our future contains, but has yet to have pass, the retreat of government financial support. It has yet to put people back to work, yet to reopen universities, yet to ramp up our manufacturing base, yet to know much of anything about moving past Covid-19. Clarity about what governments should or should not do are hindered by China’s resistance to openness and transparency, while other nations that have already faced the pandemic and seemed to recover are running into second waves. There is no clarity about the future.

iStock-518182156 (1) (1)Real estate remains at the heart of the Canadian economic story for the last 20 years. Appreciating housing prices are the chief source for growth in Canadian families’ net worth. Borrowing to buy houses and borrowing against home equity remain our chief sources of debt. Our politics revolves around the tension of needing more housing in certain highly desirable areas while preserving those areas from over development. That dynamic has revolved around a status quo that seemed to have no conceivable end. The pandemic may have radically altered the Canadian real estate landscape regardless of how people feel about it or what they want. Whether we can walk back changes of this magnitude remains very much unknowable. For now we can only watch the changes our society and economy are undergoing and hope that what we are witnessing will be for the best, those changes that have happened, and those yet to come.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Throwing Cold Water On Investor Optimism (Not That We Needed Too)

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From The Geneva Report

Yesterday the 16th Geneva Report was released bearing bad news for everybody that was hoping for good news. The report, which highlighted that debt across the planet had continued to increase  and speed up despite the market crash of 2008, is sobering and seemed to cast in stone that which we already knew; that the global recovery is slow going and still looks very anemic.

The report is detailed and well over a hundred pages and only came out yesterday, so don’t be surprised if all the news reports you read about it really only cover the first two chapters and the executive summary. What is interesting about the report is how little of it we didn’t know. Much of what the report covers (and in great detail at that) is that the Eurozone is still weak, that the Federal Reserve has lots of debt on its balance sheets, but that it has helped turn the US

A look at the Fed's Balance Sheet from the Geneva Report
A look at the Fed’s Balance Sheet from the Geneva Report

economy around, that governments have been borrowing more while companies and individuals borrow less, and that economic growth in the Emerging Markets has been accompanied by considerable borrowing. All of this we knew.

What stands out to me in this report are two things that I believe should matter to Canadian investors. First is the trouble with low interest rates. Governments are being forced to keep interest rates low, and they are doing that because raising rates usually means less economic growth. But as growth rates have been weak, nobody wants to raise rates. This leads to a Catch-22 where governments are having to take direct measures to curb borrowing because rates are low, because they can’t raise rates to curb borrowing.

This has already happened in Canada, where the Bank of Canada’s low lending rate has helped keep housing prices high, mortgage rates down and debt levels soaring. To combat this the government has attempted to change the minimal borrowing requirements for homes, but it hasn’t done much to curb the growing concern that there is a housing bubble.

The second is the idea of “Economic Miracles” which tend to be wildly overblown and inevitably lead to the same economic mess of overly enthusiastic investors dumping increasingly dangerous amounts of money into economies that don’t deserve it just to watch the whole thing come crashing down. Economic miracles include everything from Tulip Bulbs and South Sea Bubbles to the “Spanish Miracle” and “Asian Tigers”, all of which ended badly.

The rise of the BRIC nations and the recent focus on the Frontier Markets should invite some of the same scrutiny, as overly-eager investors begin trying to fuel growth in Emerging Markets through lending and direct investment, even in the face of some concerning realities. It’s telling that the Financial Times reported both the Geneva Report on the same day that the London Stock Exchange was looking to pursue more African company listings, even as corruption and corporate governance come into serious question.

All of this should not dissuade investors from the markets, but it should be seen as a reminder about the benefits of diversification and it’s importance in a portfolio. It is often tempting to let bad news ruin an investment plan, but as is so often the case emotional investing is bad investing.

I’ve added an investment piece from CI Investments which has been floating around for years. It pairs the level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average  with whatever bad news was dominating the market that year. It’s a good way to look at how doom and gloom rarely had much to do with how the market ultimately performed. Have a look by kicking the link! I don’t want to Invest Flyer

 

***I’ve just seen that the Globe and Mail has reported on the Geneva Report with the tweet “Are we on the verge of another financial crisis” which is not really what the report outlines. 

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

The Rent is Too Damned High: Stop Stopping Condos!

Driving through mid-town the other day I caught a sign that said “Stop the Alaska Condo”. Not knowing anything about it I looked it up and was met with an inspiring, modern design to replace 28 family units with 130 new units of housing around Yonge and Strathgowan.

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The Proposed Alaska Condo

Of course there is a neighbourhood association who are protesting its development. Reasons to protest include “safety” (left considerably vague), that it will introduce a number of new people and cars and that it isn’t in keeping with the village’s rustic aesthetic. The Uptown Yonge Neighbourhood Alliance acknowledges the need of urban redevelopment, just not that urban redevelopment.

Cities are more than just crowded places that people live. They are the modern backbone of vibrant economies. Toronto itself accounts for 11% of Canada’s total GDP, and depends on a growing number of people to provide tax revenues, employment and businesses. In his book Triumph of the City, author Edward Glaeser outlines how cities provide networks that spawn a creative class and strengthen our economies.

But far more concerning is how in modern times cities have also become a mess of regulations that are stifling growth. Not economic growth, but residential growth. Urban density helps make neighbourhoods more prosperous and with a wider more successful variety of services. But as is the case with the Alaska Condo, proposals to increase density often face strong resistance. I tend to view this resistance as not only cutting off one’s nose, but as immoral too. Toronto is a bustling city, whose cost of living continues to skyrocket because of lack of housing. In the rush to try and prevent change to our city we are not only choking off our future economic vitality, but punishing people financially with ever increasing home ownership and rental costs, even as more and more of our economy depends on service sector work and less on manufacturing.

I have no doubt that the members of the Uptown Yonge Neighbourhood Alliance feel very passionately about their cause, but I’m afraid it boils down to little more than NIMBY-ism. People need places to live, and the Yonge & Strathgowan area will benefit from some lower cost housing and all the new residents, who will bring money, taxes and businesses to the area.

Further Reading: The Rent is Too Damn High by Matt Yglesias

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc