For potential first-time homeowner Stevan Cooper, the recent Housing Marketing Assessment (HMA) that came out of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) held news that could be beneficial to achieving his and his partner’s goal.
“I feel better about it then I would have before,” said Cooper. “Just because in a situation like that, it puts more negotiation power in the hands of the buyers. For someone in my situation, we’re [I’m] kind of low on funds as is, stuff like that is kind of a boom for us.
The HMA states in full that “an overall moderate rating [of vulnerability] is maintained in Regina, where evidence of overbuilding remains high.”
“There’s more choice out there, because a lot of these new developments are going up faster than people can move in,” said Cooper. “So those houses need to get sold, which means that there’s also a better chance that we can get a house in a bit of a nicer area then we would’ve before. But given how quickly markets can change, who knows, by the time we’re ready to buy it might’ve flipped all the way back around again.”
Overbuilding remains a trend within the Regina area as, in accordance with the numbers from the last quarter of the 2019 Assessment, this has been a noticeable reoccurrence.
Alexis Fellner, Cooper’s partner, also made mention of the issues that come along with the housing market with regards to pricing.
“The hard part of home buying right now is having enough income to make mortgage payments possible,” said Fellner. “We both make over minimum wage at the moment, so really we could only afford about $265,000 if we were to buy this week.
“Many people, even with dual-income, find it very, very hard to make the expenses work. Having a mortgage and other housing expenses, on top of regular living expenses and vehicle costs, is really not possible for the $55,000 Steve and I make.”
Craig Adam, a realtor from RE/MAX Crown Real Estate, spoke on the positives that first-time buyers could experience from the Assessment, as well as touching on where the market stands now.
“There’s still a lot of building that’s going on,” said Adam. “But that being said, on the higher end scale, like luxury homes have slowed down significantly, just because the buyers aren’t there for that type of product.
“There’s still a lot of first-time home buyers that are getting into the market, developers are still building, because the margins are still good for them. I mean, developers aren’t going to build homes if they can’t make money, that’s just the bottom line. They have to make money, they’re not building it to not make money. But the margins are still good for them to make money even if prices aren’t going up.”
For a more detailed view into why Regina is seeing such vulnerability due to overbuilding, the HMA details this in the following:
“While a sharp pullback in housing starts helped keep the inventory of completed and unsold units per 10,000 population below the HMA framework’s critical threshold in the third quarter of 2019, this indicator was still above the threshold in two of the past four quarters.”
This, coupled along Craig Adam’s statement earlier, shows that things are looking good for individuals looking to become first-time homeowners.
“That’s a good thing for buyers,” said Adam. “They’ve got lots of choices that are out there.”
