CANADA'S REAL ESTATE MARKET UPDATE

Canada's real estate market remains "relatively solid" and should experience a "soft landing" despite the current slowdown and fears of overbuilding in the condominium segment, the country's leading bankers said on January 8.

Speaking to a RBC banking conference in Toronto, the country's top bankers said they don't expect a dramatic downturn like the one in the United States about five years ago.

The bursting of the U.S. housing bubble is considered a major cause of the credit crunch that swept Wall Street and then the global economy in the fall of 2008, after interest rates on sub-prime mortgages rose and defaults soared.

By contrast, sub-prime mortgages have been less common in Canada and real estate prices have trended upward for the most part — except for a few months during the 2008-9 recession and in some economically disadvantaged areas.

"Our expectation is that the overall real estate market in Canada is still relatively solid," said Royal Bank CEO Gord Nixon.

Despite reports that suggest Canadian housing is in crisis, he said the pullback is limited to a couple of markets, notably Vancouver.

"We have seen a slowdown in sales and we've certainly seen a slowdown in mortgage demand but price levels are relatively stable," he said, adding that other than debt to disposable income, most indicators are in line with historic standards.

"So our expectation is we've got this sort of soft landing scenario on the real estate side."

The head of Canada's largest bank said he expects RBC's consumer lending growth will slow to mid single digits but it should see a nearly double-digit increase in commercial loans.

Nixon said Royal has relatively small exposure to the condominium market at $1.2 billion of a $700-billion balance sheet and has requirements that protect it from troubled lenders.

"We're not overly concerned with respect to condo itself because our relative exposures are quite small — on a relative basis, the smallest of the Canadian banks," he said.

However, Nixon noted that a significant decline in the overall real estate market would have broader impact across the economy, which would hurt the banking industry.

Gerry McCaughey of CIBC said the bank hasn't seen credit problems in condo construction but a slowdown could be a fairly significant economic event.

"Pure math says that a soft landing, if it means you go back historic levels of activity, that we're going to have some softness in our economy," McCaughey said.

"... That softness doesn't necessarily come out in mortgage defaults, it comes out in employment softness and consequential unsecured consumer lending softness."

Bank of Montreal CEO Bill Downe told the conference that BMO deliberately limited its exposure to the Canadian condo construction market at $700 million after watching some of the problems surface in the United States in 2007 and 2008.

He doesn't expect Canadian homeowner debt to keep growing at previous levels, which will avoid an "outright collapse in the market."

"In fact, house prices may just stagnate. Condominium prices may just stagnate for a couple of years. And that's the definition of a soft landing," Downe said.

Downe predicted the overall U.S. housing market will show considerable strength this spring, stimulating commercial loans.

After a strong fourth quarter, Downe is anticipating that the American economy will be much stronger this year, which will put upward pressure on interest rates in both the U.S. and Canada.

"I think the U.S. economy is going to perform much better in 2013 than people are anticipating," he said.

Scotiabank CEO Rick Waugh said he also foresees a soft landing for the Canadian condo market, which poses the greatest risk.

http://www.globalnews.ca/money/bankers+expect+canadian+housing+market+faces+a+soft+landing+despite+slowdown/6442784150/story.html