Times are a changing.
Developers may lose their shirts over Brookswood/Fernridge and be the cause of unemployment for their camp followers.
5 year mortgages are coming up, and people will be facing rate shock when suddenly confronted by much higher rates of interest - plus other loans like home equity are now over 7%. People, hooked on debt, have overextended themselves and many will have to sell their houses, and their toys.
They won't be buying condos and townhouses.
There will likely be more dwellings on the market on top of a large glut of condos nearing completion in the near future from other developers who hope to sell their large inventory. They will try to sell to a market who will no longer be able to afford the prices they are asking. Sparking not bidding wars but competing percentage discounts after the promotions fail to bear fruit. Then the foreign owners will start to sell their empty condos, and there are many of those.
Black days ahead for the real estate market.
The Bank of Canada is not done with their rate hikes yet - a 1/2% increase alone just in the last two months. To give you an idea about how high they could go the B of C went as high as 18% in the 1980s to combat inflation.
And it's much more expensive to build these days with inflation going up monthly.
Many developers locked themselves into high cost loans themselves and just bought the 'development' land at the height of the market, paying top dollar, and there's lot's of competition out there.
Scary stuff for them as they have much to lose.
Martini construction knows this and has halted construction on the corner of 208th and 42nd. and are trying to rent their lot out for storage. They know what's coming.
This is no longer 2014 where people from other countries were knocking on doors trying to get people to sell to them. High immigration may not last long with the Federal Liberals facing low approval ratings, and new controls and taxes on foreign ownership and speculation is removing the grease from the housing market wheels. Lately the Liberals have been bringing in mostly lower income people who developers love to employ but who cannot afford houses, townhouses, or even condos.
Things are slowing down.
Lot's of things to worry about these days. If I was a developer I would be shaking in my boots.
Brookswood/Fernridge may just be their undoing...
