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Global News
2 hours ago
- Business
- Global News
Buying a house got costlier in May. What should your household income be?
Signs of a rebound may be emerging in Canada's real estate market after months of declining home prices. While buyer-friendly conditions persist in some markets, many Canadians will have to shell out more for their monthly mortgage payments, a new report shows. The monthly home affordability report by looked at home prices and mortgage rates from 13 Canadian cities. In eight of those cities, mortgage affordability got worse in May. Penelope Graham, mortgage expert at said the buyer-friendly market conditions are unlikely to last for very long. 'While buyers have enjoyed attractive housing affordability conditions throughout the spring, those days may be numbered. The latest May national housing data reveals sales are firming up over the short term,' she said. While mortgage rates remained largely unchanged, rising home prices mean you'd have to spend more money on your monthly mortgage payments, depending on where you live. For most Canadian cities, the annual household income you'd need to get approved for a mortgage has also gone up. Story continues below advertisement In May, the price of the average Canadian home was $691,299. While that is still down 1.8 per cent compared with this time last year, it is an increase of 1.9 per cent compared with April this year. A Royal Bank of Canada report said buyers are expected to dive back into the market as the uncertainty around U.S. tariffs becomes clearer. 'We expect housing market confidence to gradually rebuild as tariff de-escalation lifts some of the uncertainty that hindered activity earlier this year,' RBC economist Robert Hogue said in the report. 1:54 Business Matters: Canada's housing market in holding pattern, CREA data shows Costlier mortgages The data from Ratehub's report is based on a 10 per cent down payment with a 25-year amortization. The city that saw the highest increase in monthly mortgage payments was St. John's, N.L., where someone locking down their mortgage in May would have to pay $45 more and would need an annual household income of $86,450. Story continues below advertisement 'St. John's saw the most significant increase, with $1,690 in additional income required to purchase the average home. This is due to home prices rising ($8,900), the biggest increase of all the cities,' Graham said. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Halifax also saw affordability worsen, with the average resident paying an additional $38 a month for their mortgage. They would need a household income of $122,830 (an increase of $1,430) to buy a house. Regina (increase of $27) and Montreal (increase of $26) both saw monthly mortgage costs go up. In Regina, you would need an annual household income of $79,350 (an increase of $1,020 since April) and in Montreal, you'd need $124,620 (an increase of $980 since April). After a drop in home prices in April, the price for an average home in Toronto rose $3,400 to $1,012,800 in May. A Torontonian would have to spend $17 more ($5,139 a month) and need an annual household income of $206,500 to be able to afford a home. Winnipeg saw monthly mortgage costs rise by $13 a month to $1,968 and the average Winnipegger would need $88,250 annually to be able to buy a house. Edmonton ($7) and Fredericton ($5) both saw minor increases in monthly mortgage costs. In Edmonton, you'd need an annual household income of $96,670, while in Fredericton, you'd need $78,200. The only city that saw no change in affordability was Calgary. The average home price in the city remained the same as in April ($583,000), as did the monthly mortgage cost ($2,958) and annual income needed to buy a house ($125,170). Story continues below advertisement 2:21 Business Matters: May 'another sleepy month' for homebuyers. Will a rate cut wake them up? Where did affordability improve? 'While the majority of the cities saw affordability worsen, the biggest change was actually in Hamilton, where affordability saw a massive improvement, with $3,480 less income required to purchase the average home,' Graham said. The average home price in Hamilton was $183,100 — a drop of $7,500 since May. Story continues below advertisement A Hamilton homebuyer would need an annual income of $163,020 to be able to buy a house. With a 10 per cent down payment and a 25-year amortization, their monthly mortgage rate came down to $3,973 a month. This means that a Hamilton mortgage buyer who locked down their rate in May would save $93 a month compared with someone who locked it down in April. The decline in home prices comes amid the U.S. trade war and President Donald Trump's 50 per cent tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Hamilton is home to major Canadian steel producers and faces growing concerns about the potential for layoffs and plant closures as a result of the tariffs. While Vancouver saw the second biggest decline in home prices, with a decline of $7,500, it remains Canada's most expensive housing market by far, with an average home in May costing $1,177,100. Vancouverites also need the highest annual income of any city in Canada at $237,550 a year. They would also have to pay the highest monthly mortgage of $5,973 with a 10 per cent down payment, although it dropped $38 from April. In May, Victoria came in as the third most expensive housing market in Canada after Vancouver and Toronto, though average home prices dropped to $892,700, with the average homebuyer needing an annual salary of $183,750. Monthly mortgage costs dropped $38 to $4,530 a month. Story continues below advertisement Affordability also improved in the nation's capital, with the average Ottawa home price dropping to $629,800. An Ottawa resident would save $7 on their mortgage payment if they bought in May ($3,196 a month) and would need an annual household income of $134,020 to be able to buy a house.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The national 'emergency' that is hitting Canadians where it hurts — in their paycheques
Frances Donald was either having a highly productive morning or a disastrous finish to her workweek, depending upon one's definition of disasters in relation to getting stuff done. Royal Bank of Canada's chief economist dropped off her kid at daycare and was down to work before 8 a.m. on June 6, which was not quite a 'Super Bowl' magnitude day for economists, she said, but more along the lines of the 'playoffs,' since Statistics Canada was about to release its labour force survey for May and that's the kind of thing economists get fired up about. The unforeseen twist came shortly before 9 a.m., when the daycare called to say she needed to pick up her child because of an upset tummy. Sometimes pulling off the work/life juggle just does not go according to plan. As Donald's morning proved, however, most Canadians aren't a bunch of lazybones kicking back on the couch watching Netflix all day, but a bunch of grinders hard at work and at life. Yet that doesn't jibe with Canada's well-known issues with productivity, especially compared to the United States and other countries. That flagging productivity over the past couple of decades has added another layer of angst for policymakers, economists and others who think about this country's future and how to make it better. 'Even as a mainstream economist, I am shifting away from simply pulling apart the statistics because if you just look at the statistics, you're not seeing the whole picture,' Donald said. 'The question is, how do we create an innovative, scalable, resilient economy?' It is a great question, underscored with an even greater urgency than ever to answer since some, such as Bank of Canada's senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers in March 2024, have said Canada is in the grips of a productivity 'emergency,' not a term central bankers throw around lightly. Equally mind-blowing, perhaps, is to learn that Canada during its centennial year in 1967 was considered the world's third-most prosperous nation, behind only the United States and Switzerland. Global productivity rankings were not a thing back in those days, but Canada today is 18th best, sandwiched between Italy and Spain — the nation that made taking an afternoon nap famous — while Ireland is tops, begging the question: what in the name of James Joyce has been going on around here? 'Most people don't understand and probably couldn't care about productivity, but there's a very close link between your productivity and your income,' Philip Cross, the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada, said. Productivity, he said, boils down to how fast you can do your work and do it correctly. The faster the work gets done — accurately — the more time there is to do other things such as hanging out with friends, volunteering or taking care of business at home. Converted into dollars and cents, productivity measures the amount of output per hour worked. Forty years ago, Canadians generated 88 per cent of the value of Americans per hour worked, but that dropped to 71 per cent by 2022. That's something all Canadians should care about since Americans generate US$91.50 per capita per hour worked versus US$71.90 for those north of the border. In other words, labour productivity is not an abstract statistic, but the fundamental economic measure of a country's prosperity. 'Increased productivity is a win,' Cross said. 'It is a gift that keeps giving.' A more productive Canada would be home to locals flush with additional cash and the means to buy better cars, houses and other things, but it could also provide better roads, hospitals, public schools and transit, and give the country a better chance of retaining its homegrown talent, which is key to maintaining future productivity. 'When you talk about productivity, too many Canadians think, 'Does that mean I am supposed to work harder, because I'm already working as hard as I can and I'm juggling my family and I am coaching the minor hockey team,' and so on,' John Manley, the one-time deputy prime minister and current chair of investment banking firm Jeffries Canada, said. 'Productivity is not about working harder; it is about working smarter.' Manley is 75, but views retirement as a quaint relic of the 20th century and wishes the same were true for Canada's productivity crisis. It is a subject he first publicly addressed in a 1999 speech at the Empire of Canada Club in Toronto. In case there were any skeptics in the Bay Street crowd that day, he pointed out Ontario was about as productive as 'Mississippi'; per capita income in the U.S. at the time was 30 per cent higher than in Canada, and this country had the lowest rate of productivity growth among the G7 during the preceding 25 years. Time has marched on, but times have not changed when it comes to the productivity challenges bedevilling the country. These include, in no particular order, internal trade barriers, businesses sitting on their wallets instead of making capital investments, matching immigrants to jobs that use their skills, government red tape, a lack of access to capital, prosperity-killing corporate tax policies, a lack of competition in certain parts of the economy, not enough innovation and not enough willpower to do anything to solve the problem. One of the trickiest mountains to climb, Manley said, is that Canada is not a complete productivity disaster and is still a relatively prosperous country. 'Canadians tend to have this attitude of if you don't have to fix something because it is hard to fix, then why would you fix it?' he said. But Manley knows firsthand Canadians are more than capable of making tough fixes. In the 1990s, a Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed that Canada was an 'honorary member of the Third World.' The country's credit rating had been downgraded, the deficit was ticking past half a trillion dollars and 34 cents of every tax dollar collected was going toward servicing the debt. It was an existential fiscal crisis, and Jean Chrétien's government needed to take drastic action, not necessarily because they loved the idea of making change, but because the country no longer had a choice. Back in those days, Manley was industry minister. He oversaw a department that cut back to nine programs from 54 and laid off 25 per cent of its staff. Transfer payments to the provinces were slashed. It was an ugly time, he said, but by February 1998, the government delivered Canada's first balanced budget in 30 years. Crisis solved. The moral of the story? Change is difficult, but it is not impossible. Among the changes that currently need to be made is a widespread shift in opinion about extractive industries such as oil and gas, mining and forestry. 'We sometimes don't like to admit it, but it is our natural resources that pay the bills in Canada,' Manley said. 'We should not be ashamed of that.' But the productivity challenges confronting the energy sector, for example, are much more complex than most people in urban centres think. Once upon a time in the oilpatch, Scott Saxberg, the founder and former chief executive of Crescent Point Energy Corp., now known as Veren Inc., said there was plenty of investor capital to go around. Canada was the place to be when he initially got into the game in the early 2000s. He did not know any of the 'rules,' but what he found was a regulatory environment that, year over year, grew increasingly dense. There always seemed to be a new regulation being layered on top of an old regulation and that brought on increased uncertainty. Investors, he said, hate uncertainty. The Americans delaying and eventually quashing the Keystone XL pipeline was another blow, and the bruises eventually began to add up. Saxberg remembers meeting a potential investor in Scotland and feeling confident about reaching a deal right up until the gentleman looked down at his phone, looked back up and said he was not going to invest because it appeared Keystone XL was not going to fly. Without the new pipeline, any energy company producing in Canada would be at a 'cost disadvantage compared to producers in the U.S.' End of meeting. 'Capital is competitive; it moves around the globe,' he said. 'So when you hear the word competitiveness, what that means is you want to create a country with an environment that attracts capital and out competes other countries for that capital because capital looks at an industry on a macro basis and it goes, 'Well, you're not going to be a good long-term investment, so we are going to look elsewhere.'' Alberta's oilsands had the added disadvantage of being a more costly product to produce, as well as being next door to the U.S., which underwent a fracking craze and completed five new pipelines in 2024 alone, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, several international players, including TotalEnergies SE, BP PLC, ConocoPhillips and Shell PLC, have exited the province in recent years. Wooing them back, Saxberg said, is going to require streamlining regulations, increasing capacity to move oil and natural gas to market (hello pipelines) and a recognition that Alberta and Saskatchewan are not the bad guys, but key drivers of Canadian prosperity. The government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline is a poster child of productivity. It requires about 750 people to operate, gives Canadian oil producers better access to overseas markets and is expected to produce $2.8 billion in tax revenues by 2043. 'That pipeline produces a product that goes into international markets and the money comes back to Canada and we put it into health care, education, roads, bridges, tunnels and whatever else,' Manley said. 'Imagine what we could do with more of the above.' Dreaming of a future full of new pipelines can steal attention away from some of the more upbeat and unsung productivity stories in the present day. If Canada were to appoint a chief storyteller to convey these yarns, Linda Hasenfratz, chair of auto-parts manufacturing giant Linamar Corp., should get the nod. She's the type of person who can look at a 'drop of water in a glass and see it as half full,' one person who knows her well said. Hasenfratz is also the type of executive who uses charts and graphs to hammer home points during an interview. Topping her list of key takeaways is that Linamar has boosted its productivity by 100 per cent over the past 15 years. Over the same timeframe, the Canadian manufacturing sector as a whole improved its productivity by about 50 per cent, which, perhaps surprisingly, outpaced the U.S. sector's gains. Linamar has 75 plants worldwide and ranks its Canadian ones as its most productive. Toyota Motor Corp.'s Canadian plants are its best performers, according to auto industry analyst J.D. Power, and General Motors Co.'s facility in Oshawa, Ont., consistently ranks as its top factory in North America. In other words, Canadian operations are competing and appear to be crushing it. But one obstacle to that dynamic showing up on Canada's bottom line is government, Hasenfratz said. Nearly one per cent of all Canadians are federal employees. Between 2010 and 2023, the government's headcount grew by 26 per cent. More than 2.5 million Canadians worked for not-for-profit organizations in 2023, according to government statistics. Combined, Hasenfratz said that means far too many well-educated Canadians are working in areas that do not make a dime. 'We need to get more people into revenue-generating businesses and that would have an enormous positive impact on productivity,' she said. Hasenfratz also pointed out that the stories we choose to tell about ourselves matter. 'When you hear things like Canada is not productive, that is not very inspiring, and it doesn't make you think, 'Damn, I'm going to get in there and be more productive tomorrow,'' she said. 'But if you see an example of a company that has doubled its productivity over the past 15 years and in doing so has gained business, grown profit and realized a great return on investment, then you'll be like, 'I want to do that,' because that is inspiring.' Trevor Tombe, a University of Calgary economics professor, recognizes Canada is awash with unrealized potential, but said there are issues in trying to realize those gains. Let's imagine Hasenfratz and her manufacturing sector pals, oil producers and agriculturists are all able to generate more of what the world wants for export — especially to destinations other than the U.S. All that stuff would need to get loaded into massive container ships at the ports of Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax. But the Port of Vancouver is already the largest on the North American West Coast and is handling record levels of cargo. An expansion that has been in the works since 2013 will not be completed until sometime in the 2030s. Montreal got the ball rolling on its port expansion in 2018, but it's still in progress and a long ways away. 'If you want to sell a good to another country beyond the United States, you are not doing it by truck or rail; you're doing it by port because there's an ocean in the way,' Tombe said. 'Right now, we don't have any excess port capacity that would allow us to trade much more with other countries, and in terms of a construction timeline in Vancouver, it is plausibly 20 years from start to finish.' If Canada is unable to get its goods moving, diversify its trade partners, grow exports to China, Japan, South Korea, India and so on, the U.S. is left as the only option. That is not a great position to be in when negotiating a new trade deal with Donald Trump. One option is to build ports elsewhere, such as the Arctic. There currently isn't a deepwater port to speak of there, but there's been plenty of talk of building one — some day. 'There is not just economic and productivity implications of bad federal policy around infrastructure, but national security implications,' Tombe said. Another area in need of a makeover that does not require anything more complicated and time-consuming than playing around with some accounting software datasets is tax policy. Small businesses, defined as companies with less than 500 employees, employ almost 50 per cent of the labour force. But they don't make capital investments in machinery and equipment at the same levels as Canada's G7 peers, apart from the Italians, who invest even less. A worker who lacks the latest tools is not as productive as the worker who does. Companies that retool an assembly line, upgrade laptops and arm staff with best-in-class gadgets are able to write off the expenditures over a number of years, but that 'delays the value' of the tax deductions, Tombe said. Were a company able to write off the new laptops in one fell swoop at the time of purchase, well, now we would be talking, he said, and the conversation would lead to an environment where companies are encouraged to reinvest today. 'It is a way to cut corporate taxes on new investment while maintaining corporate taxes on companies as a whole, so it's less costly than just dropping the corporate tax rate itself,' he said. That may seem an easy thing to do, and the same goes for another productivity fix that relates to Canada's secret weapon: immigrants. Walid Hejazi, an economics professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, meets a lot of them, and he said the old joke about the backseat of a taxi being the safest place to have a heart attack still holds up, though the taxi-driving doctor from abroad today is probably behind the wheel of an Uber. Hejazi, through the university, works with a group of immigrant women who all have university degrees from another country. They are smart, savvy and eager to become productive new Canadians. 'Do you know what the No. 1 job these women get offered is?' he said. 'Serving coffee at Tim Hortons.' Rotman puts the newcomers through a crash micro-business course. If successfully completed, that earns them a micro-credential from the school, which hopefully catches the eye of an artificial intelligence employment screener and gets them a face-to-face interview with another human. 'The goal here is to match the women with jobs that are more commensurate with their skills,' he said. As for being compared to the U.S., he said being neighbours has been a gift. We share the same language and customs, generally get along and find it easy to do business with one another to the extent that Canada's ho-hum productivity level has not been a handicap. But where it starts to be a big problem is when the U.S. closes for business and Canadian companies are forced to win market share abroad. 'It is relatively easy for a Canadian company to do business in the U.S., and it requires productivity at a given level,' he said. 'But to go to Europe and Asia and compete requires a much higher productivity level.' Canada may be having a productivity 'emergency,' but its productivity is improving, just at a slower rate than other countries with similar attributes. That is partly why Frances Donald gets the urge to 'vent' when she speaks about productivity, since obsessing over the numbers can obscure a more fundamental question: What kind of Canada do Canadians aspire to? 'You could conceive a plan that would mechanically boost our productivity number,' she said. 'But it wouldn't actually make the Canadian economy better for most Canadians.' For example, not all those productivity-sapping public-sector employees are administrators pushing paper around. They are also teachers, cops, wildfire fighters and doctors. Close to 20 per cent of Canadians have already ticked past age 65, and odds are that a care facility is in their future at some point. 'If I told you that we could quadruple the number of high-productivity engineers, but we dramatically reduce the number of doctors and that would result in higher productivity statistics, then you might hear Canadians say, 'Could I please pick the health-care workers over the high-productivity engineer?'' Donald said. Economists have spent a decade highlighting Canada's productivity ills, from internal trade barriers to reduced investment in the natural resource sector to an affordable housing crisis that only gets worse by the year. It is a drumbeat of doom that can overshadow what Canada has, chiefly, a highly educated population, a massive breadbasket of agricultural goods, oil and gas and critical minerals galore and plenty of room for the world's best and brightest who may be keen to sign on. 'In Canada, we don't have to ask what we are going to bake out of nothing because we already have a long list of something,' Donald said. 'Our project is to have a collective understanding of what this country has been blessed in, from things in the ground to our incredibly high level of education — spanning from goods to a blossoming services sector. Canada is not short on the ingredients to build a powerful economy; where we have fallen short is on the execution.' • Email: joconnor@
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Canada may raise counter-tariffs on US metals as trade talks continue
Canada could increase its counter-tariffs on US-produced steel and aluminium if it does not reach a broader trade agreement with the United States within 30 days, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump raised import duties on steel and aluminium from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, leading to calls from the metals industry in Canada for a formal response. Canada is the largest exporter of steel and aluminium to the US. Carney said he and Trump had agreed to aim for a new economic and security agreement by 21 July, according to Reuters. 'Canada will adjust its existing counter-tariffs on US steel and aluminium products on 21 July to levels consistent with progress made in the broader trading agreement with the United States,' Carney told a press conference. Procurement rules, market stabilisation measures announced Rather than immediately matching the US tariff hike, Carney said he would wait to see how the ongoing discussions progressed. Canada had earlier imposed 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs on steel products worth C$12.6 billion and aluminium products worth C$3 billion on 13 March. Carney also announced new procurement rules. Under these, Canadian producers and trading partners with reciprocal tariff-free access will be eligible to compete for federal steel and aluminium contracts. Canada will introduce tariff-rate quotas equivalent to 100 per cent of 2024 import levels on steel products from countries without free trade agreements. Carney said this was to 'stabilise the domestic market and prevent harmful trade diversion.' According to the Royal Bank of Canada, Canada exports over 90 per cent of its steel and aluminium to the US, while it imports around 20 per cent of US steel exports and 50 per cent of its aluminium exports. Carney said the federal government would prioritise the use of Canadian steel and aluminium in public projects, including defence, pipelines and housing. 'We are united in working on all forms of support for the industry... that starts with buying Canadian steel and aluminium for federal projects,' Carney said. The government also plans to support the use of Canadian metals in domestically manufactured products and will establish a task force to monitor developments in the steel and aluminium markets under the current tariff regime.
New Straits Times
16 hours ago
- Business
- New Straits Times
Canada could slap more duties on US steel and aluminium, says Carney
OTTAWA: Canada could increase counter-tariffs on US-produced steel and aluminium if it does not reach a broader trade deal with President Donald Trump within 30 days, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. Trump increased import duties on steel and aluminium to 50 per cent from 25 per cent earlier this month, prompting industry calls for an official response. Trump's move could hurt Canada, which is the largest seller of the metals to the US. Carney said on Monday he had agreed with Trump that the two nations should try to wrap up a new economic and security deal by July 21. "Canada will adjust its existing counter-tariffs on US steel and aluminium products on July 21 to levels consistent with progress made in the broader trading agreement with the United States," Carney told a press conference. Carney refrained from immediately matching Trump's June tariff hike, saying he wanted to see progress on talks to create a new economic and security relationship. On March 13, Canada imposed 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs on a list of steel products worth C$12.6 billion and aluminium products worth C$3 billion. As part of Thursday's announcement, Canada will implement new procurement rules, under which Canadian producers and trading partners who have tariff-free reciprocal access can compete for federal procurements of steel and aluminium. Carney said Canada would establish new tariff-rate quotas of 100 per cent of 2024 levels on imports of steel products from non-free trade agreement partners "to stabilise the domestic market and prevent harmful trade diversion." Canada ships over 90 per cent of its total steel and aluminium exports to the US and consumes about one-fifth of US exports of steel and 50 per cent of its aluminium exports, according to the Royal Bank of Canada, highlighting the critical metals trade between the two countries. Under Carney, Canada has also lined up an array of projects to build infrastructure, starting from defence, oil and gas pipelines to doubling housing capacity – all of which will require tonnes of steel and aluminium. "We are united in working on all forms of support for the industry... that starts with buying Canadian steel and aluminium for federal projects," Carney said while addressing questions from the media. As part of the new measures, the government will also favour the use of Canadian steel and aluminium in Canadian-made products and will create a task force to monitor how the steel and aluminium markets are evolving under the tariff regime.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Posthaste: Canadian renters are waiting for home prices to drop before buying — they could be disappointed
More Canadian renters are planning on buying a home, but they are waiting for property prices to drop, says a new real estate survey. Royal LePage's 2025 renters report out today found that 54 per cent of renters plan to buy a property, a third of these within the next two years. Forty per cent said they were waiting for home prices to fall further. 'History suggests they may be disappointed,' said Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage. 'Over the past 75 years, Canadian home values have risen approximately five per cent annually, running consistently ahead of inflation. The window of opportunity may be narrower than it appears, and strategic buyers are beginning to move.' Canadian home sales and prices have fallen this year nation-wide as Donald Trump's tariff war kept nervous buyers at bay. But signs of a turnaround stirred in May. Home sales rose for the first time in more than six months and prices steadied after three months of decline. 'The developments could be early signs that Canada's housing market is turning a corner after trade war-induced anxiety sent it declining this year,' said Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Almost 30 per cent of Canadian renters in the Royal LePage survey said they were waiting for lower interest rates, but relief there is also by no means a sure thing. The Bank of Canada has held its benchmark interest rate at 2.75 per cent for the past two meetings, and in its summary of deliberations this week, the central bank flagged inflation as a concern. RBC has removed any further rate cuts from its forecast, though other economists still expect more easing. Not all Canadian renters can afford to buy a home. A third of respondents in the Royal LePage survey say they had no plans to buy, with more than half of them saying they don't have the income to get a property in their desired neighbourhood. Forty per cent said renting is more affordable than owning a home. But renting is no picnic either in Canada's housing market. Rents have declined for eight months in a row, but they remain above long-term averages, said Royal LePage. The national average for a one-bedroom rental unit in May was $1,857. Over the past five years rent increases have outpaced wage growth, according to and Urbanation's national rent report. Rents are almost 6 per cent higher than two years ago and 12.6 per cent higher than three years ago. Thirty-seven per cent of renters in Canada said they spend between 31 and 50 per cent of their net income on rent, Royal LePage's survey found. Fifteen per cent say they spend more than 50 per cent. to get Posthaste delivered straight to your population growth slowed to a stop in the first quarter of this year. About 20,000 people were added between January and April — essentially a zero per cent growth rate, and the lowest since records began in 1946. Only when Canada closed its borders during the pandemic, leading to a population decline of 1,232 people in the third quarter of 2020, has the growth rate been lower. The average rate between 2015 and 2024 was 0.3 per cent. Statistics Canada said Wednesday that this was the sixth consecutive quarter of slower population growth after the federal government announced in 2024 that it would lower the levels of both temporary and permanent immigration. Read more from the Financial Post's Naimul Karim on the latest population numbers. U.S. markets closed for Juneteenth National Independence Day Canadian Competition Bureau releases final report on its airline market study Earnings: Empire Co. Ltd. Scott Thomson: Canada is finally backing out of its corner Bank of Canada governor says potential trade and security deal with U.S. is 'welcome news' Canada could play leading role as G7 strikes alliance to stockpile critical minerals Kathy, 50, and Trevor, 53, have two financial goals before Kathy retires at age 55 and Trevor retires at age 60. They want to pay off the mortgage on their primary residence and build up $500,000 in easy-to-access investment income. Family Finance has some options: either double their monthly mortgage payments or sell their $620,000 rental property. Find out more Last week, we published a feature on the death of the summer job as student unemployment reaches crisis levels. We want to hear directly from Canadians aged 15-24 about their summer job search. Send us your story, in 50-100 words, and we'll publish the best submissions in an upcoming edition of the Financial Post. You can submit your story by email to fp_economy@ under the subject heading 'Summer job stories.' Please include your name, your age, the city and province where you reside, and a phone number to reach you. Are you worried about having enough for retirement? Do you need to adjust your portfolio? Are you starting out or making a change and wondering how to build wealth? Are you trying to make ends meet? Drop us a line at wealth@ with your contact info and the gist of your problem and we'll find some experts to help you out while writing a Family Finance story about it (we'll keep your name out of it, of course). Want to learn more about mortgages? Mortgage strategist Robert McLister's Financial Post column can help navigate the complex sector, from the latest trends to financing opportunities you won't want to miss. Plus check his mortgage rate page for Canada's lowest national mortgage rates, updated daily. Visit the Financial Post's YouTube channel for interviews with Canada's leading experts in business, economics, housing, the energy sector and more. Today's Posthaste was written by Pamela Heaven with additional reporting from Financial Post staff, The Canadian Press and Bloomberg. Have a story idea, pitch, embargoed report, or a suggestion for this newsletter? Email us at posthaste@ Finance emerges as the hot job for new grads Here's what the TSX's record run says about the Canadian economy Sign in to access your portfolio
