Rising home prices amid a major recession have exposed the No. 1 crisis in Canada — podcast
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Despite being in one of the worst recessions in recent history, home prices are rising across Canada. What’s going on?
This week on Down to Business, Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC, spoke about a report he authored earlier this month on whether this ‘housing friendly recession’ will last.
Tal explained that the pandemic has unleashed one of the most “uneven” crises in history, with many of the job losses occurring in the lower-income bracket. That means people who may already have been priced out of buying property have been hurt the worst. Meanwhile, everybody else is taking advantage of low-interest rates to upsize their living space.
The conversation quickly detoured into a discussion of income inequality, which Tal described as the number one crisis in our society. For what it’s worth, Tal predicted that the pandemic would have a less enduring impact on our behaviour than many people are predicting. Soon enough, we’ll all be working from the office again, he said.
