As an industry leader, Teranet is committed to connecting customers and partners with experts to have meaningful conversations about the opportunities and challenges we all face in the real estate industry through our Market Insight Forums.
On February 19th, we invited key members from the legal, real estate, mortgage and lending communities to join us for an afternoon filled with discussions surrounding housing affordability, a lack of supply and the current economic climate.
The event kicked off with a Market Intelligence presentation from Emily Cheung, Teranet’s Director of Data Analytics & Insights. Emily provided an overview of activity amongst Ontario’s buyer segments, highlighted registration activity in specific regions of Ontario, investigated trends related to first-time homebuyers and multi-property owners and much more. The data presented in Emily’s session will be available in our next Market Insight Report. Click here to subscribe to receive the report to your inbox as soon as it’s released.
Benjamin Tal, Deputy Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets Inc., then provided an economic update, focusing on inflation rates, Canadian immigration levels, GDP growth, the economic impact of tariffs and the mortgage renewal wave.
Next, Teranet’s Senior Vice President, Finance & Chief Financial Officer, Kerri Brass, moderated a discussion with our esteemed panel of industry experts: Tania Bourassa-Ochoa, Deputy Chief Economist, CMHC, Kari Norman, Economist, Desjardins Group and Alina Weaver, Vice President, Retail Credit Adjudication, CIBC.
During their conversation the panel focused on the anticipated impact of the upcoming mortgage renewal wave in 2025, the potential impact of tariffs from the U.S., long-term trends that will shape the mortgage origination market and their predictions for the housing market in 2025 and beyond. Here are a few key takeaways from the discussion between Tania, Kari and Alina:
- The upcoming renewal wave presents lenders with the opportunity to gather further data about their customers and how to develop and offer them the products they are best suited to.
- The mortgage renewal wave will hit different types of buyers differently. Millennials and younger generations will struggle more than others as they bought houses when prices were high and their interest rates are going to double while they’ve only had five years of potential career growth.
- Tariffs and retaliatory tariffs will impact housing starts and housing sales as well as the construction supply chain. It’s anticipated that construction costs in certain provinces will increase because of their reliance on materials from the United States. The construction industry is very fragmented which highlights the opportunity to introduce technology or processes that would lead to a more productive construction industry with less fragmentation.
- Canada’s mortgage origination process is fairly outdated and inefficient and we are starting to lag other similar jurisdictions that have started to incorporate digitization and AI during mortgage origination. As an industry we need to work together to remove paper-based, manual and repetitive processes. Focusing on the digitization of the main documents used during mortgage origination and enhancements to income verification will be key factors in updating this process.
When it came to their predictions for the housing market this year Kari, Alina and Tania shared these thoughts:
- Despite economic headwinds it is believed the housing market will improve in 2025.
- The decline in remote work means that we’ll likely see more homes being purchased in more central, urban areas.
- Refinance activity driven by investment will continue to be strong.
Finally the afternoon ended with a keynote address from Jay Kiew, an innovation and change navigation strategist. He spoke to the audience about navigating through this era of digital disruption and how we can focus on making innovative transformations in our industry.
Thank you very much to all of the speakers who came to share their expertise with us, and our valued customers and partners who joined us for an afternoon of insights and learning. We look forward to connecting in the future at next year’s Market Insight Forum.
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