Housing

Investing in a property can be exciting, but taking the time to properly analyze your deal is paramount. In some cases, what may seem like a good deal at first glance may actually cause financial pitfalls long-term. Similarly, when comparing two or more possible investment opportunities, one property may seem to offer a great investment up front, while the other actually offers the best return over time. In order to uncover the best possible investment deals, commit the following real estate investing calculations to memory:

Every year, UBS publishes the Global Real Estate Bubble Index, and the most recent edition shows several key markets in bubble territory.

Real estate ‘values’ will drop 50% in cities such as Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco and 25% in many other cities around the world. Here's why.

...The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) House Price-To-Rent Index, and a linear regression model...predicts Canadian real estate prices will fall 28% by 2020. Here are the details.

Global home prices are on the rise, and numbers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the monetary policy arm of the UN, show that Canada ranks amongst the top ten of all of their housing indicators. While that sounds like a good thing, the IMF generally warns that too much growth means overvaluation. Overvaluation requires a correction, and if it goes too high, even a crash.

The United States is starting to see a surge in foreign buying according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). These numbers are showing explosive growth in both the transactions, and dollar volume.

If you’re from Canada and the U.S., chances are you’ll never see market capitulation. However, you’ll likely see many corrections, and maybe even a couple of crashes. Here are the definitions of the meanings of the words: correction. crash and capitulation.

There are over 552,000 multi-millionaires, and 87% of them own a second home. The wealth analysts at New World Wealth (NWW) have compiled their annual report on second home buying by multi-millionaires, those with over US$10 million in assets. Old money cites (NY, Hong Kong, etc…) top the list for the most secondary homes held by this segment of buyers, but some interesting new cities are experiencing rapid growth.

The number of homes with negative equity in the U.S. is still high, but the numbers are improving. At the end of the first quarter in 2017, 3.1 million homes owed more on their mortgage than the home was worth. This number improved from the previous quarter, with 91,000 homes regaining equity. The total number of mortgages underwater in the U.S. still stands at 6.1%.

Now that Canada has been flagged for a recession next year, it’ll be interesting to see how Canadians respond. Will they abstain from further binging, or are they too busy shopping for new homes to hear the warnings.