Hicks on Biz: Why a post-COVID-19 real estate collapse is not going to happen By Graham Hicks first published: May 8, 2020

Edmonton's housing market started out strong in March, but ended with an overall decline of two per cent compared to last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.File Predictions of doom in the post-COVID Canadian real estate market have to be questioned … as do visions of sunshine and roses. On the gloom side, analysts argue COVID will be the straw that breaks the back of Vancouver and Toronto’s real estate prices, prices that have defied normal cycles by going up, up, up over the last 20 years with no major corrections. A real-estate crash in those two cities would send the Canadian economy reeling – a knock-out punch on top of the financial burden caused by the COVID crisis. A more convincing counter-argument says the financial storm will be minor. Thanks to COVID spending by governments, especially shoring up banks, things will return to “normal” (with way more debt, but nobody seems to care) in a year’s time. A sobering statistic: Until a few years ago, rea ... Read the rest of entry »