Canadian housing starts fell by 31.8k (-10.6 per cent) to 267.1k units in October at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate (SAAR). Comparing year-over-year, starts were up from October of 2021 (11.5 per cent). Single-detached housing starts fell 4 per cent to 72.8k, while multi-family and others fell 13 per cent to 194.3k (SAAR). 

In British Columbia, starts fell by 14 per cent in October to 46.6k units SAAR in all areas of the province. In areas in the province with 10,000 or more residents, single-detached starts fell 4 per cent m/m to 7.7k units while multi-family starts fell 17 per cent to 35k units. Starts in the province were 29.5 per cent above the levels from October 2021. Starts were down by 6.1k in Vancouver, 1.1k in Abbotsford, and 0.6k in Kelowna, but were up by 4.1k in Victoria. The 6-month moving average trend fell 2.3 per cent to 49.3k in BC in October. 

For more information, please contact: Gino Pezzani.

Link: https://mailchi.mp/bcrea/canadian-housing-starts-october-2022

Canadian prices, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), rose 6.9 per cent on a year-over-year basis in October, a rate of change equal to the prior month. After falling for the prior three months, a rise in gasoline prices in October kept the CPI steady year-over-year. Excluding energy, the CPI rose 6.2 per cent year over year in October, down from 6.3 per cent last month. Rising interest rates also contributed to an increase in mortgage interest costs, which was up 11.2 per cent year-over-year as Canadians renewed or initiated higher-rate mortgages. Slowing increases in food prices, meanwhile, dampened overall CPI growth. Month-over-month, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, prices were up 0.6 per cent in October. In BC, consumer prices rose 7.8 per cent year-over-year, up from 7.7 per cent last month. Average hourly wages grew 5.6 per cent year-over-year in October, indicating a decline in purchasing power. 

October's CPI numbers continued to suggest that inflation may be slowing. Despite higher gasoline prices, slowing increases in food prices kept the annual rate of change in the CPI stable. Core inflation, however, remains well above the Bank of Canada's 2 per cent target and will need to decline significantly over the next several months before the Bank rethinks its current tightening policy. 

Link: https://mailchi.mp/bcrea/canadian-inflation-october-2022

For more information, please contact: Gino Pezzani.

Strategic planning can be streamlined, as long as you’re focused on the right issues. Spending a few minutes each day on these questions will help you see where you have to go:

What are your goals?

What strategies are you using to pursue them?

What obstacles are preventing you from achieving them?

What could you do differently?

What resources do you have? What do you need?

Vancouver, BC – November, 2022. The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that a total of 5,242 residential unit sales were recorded by the Multiple Listing Service^® (MLS^®) in October 2022, a decrease of 45.5 per cent from October 2021. The average MLS^® residential price in BC was $932,979, a 3.1 per cent decrease from $963,011 recorded in October 2021. Total sales dollar volume was $4.9 billion, a 47.2 per cent decline from the same time last year. 

“Sales activity remains slow across the province and inventories appear to be plateauing,” said BCREA Chief Economist Brendon Ogmundson. “While prices have fallen from peak levels reached in early 2022, average prices have recently leveled off.”
 
Year-to-date, BC residential sales dollar volume was down 26.3 per cent from the same period in 2021 to $73.3 billion. Residential unit sales were down 33 per cent to 72,824 units, while the average MLS^® residential price was up 10 per cent to $1.01 million.

For the complete news release, including detailed statistics, click here.

For more information, please contact: Gino Pezzani.

You can “empower” an employee to carry out a task, but whose fault is it if he or she fails? Managers and employees share equal responsibility for making empowerment successful. Here’s what each of you has to do:

For you like this kind of articles, please contact: Gino Pezzani.

Despite your best and most creative efforts, your innovative project has failed. Don’t despair. The Jeffrey Baumgartner website recommends analyzing the failure by asking these questions:

What went right? It’s a rare failure that doesn’t have some redeeming qualities. Identify things that went well. It’ll cheer you up, and you may incorporate those small victories into your next project.

What went wrong? Now that you’re feeling a little better, look at where you tripped up. Make a list of the mistakes you made so you’re clear on the root causes of the failure.

Why did it go wrong? Maybe your process was flawed, or you had bad information, or you made incorrect assumptions. Ask the people around you for their perceptions. When you learn why things went awry, you’ll be better able to avoid future mistakes.

Are you repeating mistakes? Everyone makes the occasional mistake. You’ve got to be sure you’re not making the same mistakes over and over again. Look at past failures to determine whether your process is flawed in some way.

What can you salvage? Take a look at the end result and see if you can find something useful to recycle - data, equipment, product components, whatever. Your project won’t be a complete loss if you can repurpose at least some of its elements.

Pizza may be many people’s favorite food, but it’s not without controversy. Take, for example, the debate about pineapple and anchovies. The Food & Wine website reports on a survey by Slice, a pizza ordering platform, in which consumers were asked to rate different toppings.

With more than 9,000 responses to Slice’s poll of customers, pineapple emerged as the least popular topping, rejected by 54% who said it shouldn’t be considered a topping at all. Anchovies turned out to have some fans, though, principally in the state of Delaware, where they’re most popular - 63% of residents there are willing to include them in their order.

One thing many people agreed on, however, was breakfast. The survey found that 53% of respondents would prefer a slice of cold pizza for breakfast over juice and eggs.

When people don’t understand what you’re trying to share with them, they might get frustrated. You may wonder why they aren’t comprehending something that seems relatively simple. This is called the curse of knowledge, as is spelled out in this story... 

Elizabeth Newton was studying at Stanford University in 1990 when she set up a simple experiment. She divided students into two different groups: tappers and listeners. Tappers were asked to tap out a simple song that everyone would know, and listeners had to guess the song.

She asked tappers to take a guess ahead of time on how many people would guess correctly and they predicted that about half would get it right. When they tapped it out, though, only 2.5% got it right. Listeners were only hearing tappity tap, but tappers (internally) were hearing the whole song.

The point is this: when we have any type of information that we’re conveying to someone else, the tapper always knows more than the listener and has the bigger picture.

BCREA 2022 Fourth Quarter Housing Forecast

Vancouver, BC – November, 2022. The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) released its 2022 Fourth Quarter Housing Forecast today. 

Multiple Listing Service^® (MLS^®) residential sales in BC are forecast to decline 34.4 per cent from a record high 2021 to 82,345 units this year. In 2023, MLS^® residential sales are forecast to fall an additional 11.4 per cent to 72,960 units.   

“The factors that drove unprecedented housing market activity over the past two years, including record low mortgage rates, buyer preference for extra space and the ability to work remotely, are now unwinding,” said BCREA Chief Economist Brendon Ogmundson. “As a result, there has been a significant shift in the housing market, which we anticipate will continue through 2023.”

With continued high-interest rates and what looks like a difficult 2023 ahead for the Canadian economy, we anticipate that market activity is going to fall below normal levels next year. On the supply side, slow sales activity has led to an increase in inventory, but from record lows. The rapid shift in market conditions has weighed on prices in the second half of this year, though active listings growth has slowed and is short of levels where we tend to see more substantial downward pressure on prices. However, price levels have fallen from their peak earlier this year, so even flat prices from current levels will translate to the provincial average price being down about 5 per cent in 2023.

To view the BCREA Housing Forecast PDF, click here.

For more information, please contact: Gino Pezzani.

What a joy it is to be writing this letter to you again. If the fall spirit hasn’t been with you since October… it’s upon you now! November classically gets me into the fall spirit—the crispiness of the air or the promise of a huge and delicious dinner with family or friends. I love and cherish all of it.

Although it’s time for connection and celebration, remember the beautiful opportunity we have to go inward and reflect. With the new year mere months away, we have the chance to slow down and assess where we want to go, while appreciating how far we have come. Something I like to do in my downtime is try to recall where I was on this day last year.

If you need help, then consider referencing your phone’s camera roll to help spark a memory. Try to remember what you did that day, who you were with, and who that person is to you now. Do you look the same? And more importantly, do you feel the same?

Even if the changes are insignificant, the point is to recognize change. No matter how established you might be in your job or family, you’ve changed, which is a grand thing. Celebrate the big and small shifts during the last year as you plan for your future.

I wish you a happy November from my heart to yours.

Until then,

Gino Pezzani