David Rosenberg: "This Is A Bubble Of Historic Proportions"

Shortly after we remarked most recently on the unprecedented Canadian housing bubble that has migrated from Vancouver to Toronto, Gluskin Sheff"s Chief Economist David Rosenberg joined the growing chorus of calls for government intervention into the Toronto housing market. In an interview on BNN, Rosenberg, who correctly called the U.S. housing bubble in 2005 when still at Merrill Lynch, said the massive deviation from historical norms has him drawing comparisons between the two situations.

“This bubble is on par with what we had in the States back in ’05, ’06, ’07,” he said. “We have to actually take a look at the situation. The housing market here is in a classic price bubble. If you don’t acknowledge that, you have your head in the sand.”

Rosenberg warned unchecked increases in home prices are becoming a social issue. “It’s not an equity, it’s not a bond -- it’s where people live,” he said. “Where home prices are in Toronto, they absorb 13 years of average family income. That is completely abnormal. We’ve never seen this before.”

“We’re out of equilibrium, and when we’re out of equilibrium, or there’s some sort of market failure, are there grounds there for government intervention? I think even the most ardent libertarian would say ‘yes"." Rosenberg said there are a trio of levers the government can pull to cool down the market. Authorities can address supply, which he said has already been “kiboshed.” Interest rates can be raised, but Rosenberg doesn’t believe the Bank of Canada will do that.  Or new policy can be drafted to address the prevalence of speculation.

“These are not prices driven by the local fundamentals -- this is the foreign buyer coming in,” Rosenberg said. “Toronto has really emerged as a first-class city, not just politically, not just culturally and economically, but also in terms of being a major financial centre. But if you’re going to ask me at this stage, ‘do we need to approach taxation of this capital coming in differently to curb the demand?’ [That’s] absolutely right.”

And just to make his position clear, Rosenberg also an op-ed in Canada"s Financial Post on the topic, titled simply enough:

"Make no mistake, the Toronto real estate market is in a bubble of historic proportions"

by David Rosenberg

The concerns about froth in Toronto’s housing market are not likely to subside given the sticker-shock from the latest report from the Toronto Real Estate Board.

As per the March report, the average single-detached house in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) sold for $1,214,422 last month up from $910,375 in March of last year — that is a 33 per cent YoY surge, and follows a 16 per cent run-up over the prior 12 months.

Whatever the term is for an acceleration in an already parabolic curve, well, that is what we have on our hands today.

And it isn’t just detached homes seeing this degree of rapid price appreciation — the benchmark single-family home selling price was up 29 per cent YoY, the benchmark townhouse price was up 28 per cent and the condo/apartment composite was up 24 per cent.

This is a bubble of historic proportions.

Not only to have home prices in the GTA now absorb an unprecedented 13 years of median family income, but to have 30 per-cent-ish run-ups against a backdrop of a 2 per cent inflation rate, wages that are barely going up 2 per cent as well, and nominal GDP growth of around 4 per cent. This should put 30 per cent into some sort of perspective when we conclude that what we have on our hands is a near three standard deviation event.

That alone qualifies as a bubble — if you don’t like that term, then call it a giant sud. In the past, Toronto home prices went up at an annual rate of 4 per cent in real terms, in the past year they have surged by nearly 30 per cent.

Some context, however, is needed here.

First, this aggressive increase in home prices in Canada’s most populous city has come (at least in part) due to strong competition among potential buyers for comparatively scant homes for sale.

Active listings of homes available for sale in Toronto plunged 35.2 per cent YoY in March, which means that the months’ supply of houses on the market is a miniscule 0.65, down from 1.18 last March — for reference, a “balanced market” sees a months’ supply figure around 6.0. The average home that was put up for sale remained on the market for just 10 days, down from 16 days a year ago.

These measures of “tightness” in the market are without precedent — not even the red-hot late-1980s bubble experience could ever compete with today’s backdrop.

As well, the sales-to-new listings ratio sits well into “sellers’ market” territory at 70.8 per cent, which compares to 69.4 per cent a year ago — a ratio between 40 per cent and 60 per cent is considered indicative of a “balanced market.”

No wonder nobody wants to list their home! It’s become such a valuable asset.

But you see, this is where the danger comes in: when people start to view their house as some investment as opposed to a home — a place to raise the kids and play with them in the backyard.

A house is an asset indeed, but should never be compared to a stock or a bond or even other investable properties. It is a place to live.

Unlike a stock, which you can sell anytime and tuck away the winnings, if you sell your house, well, you still need a roof over your head. A stock with a dividend gives you an income stream, as does a fixed-income instrument. Unless you are a landlord, your house is burning cash (utilities, property taxes, maintenance), not bringing in cash.   

So there are indeed some supply and demand fundamentals that are underpinning prices. Insofar as the demand is rising because people think they are investing in something hot just because of the accelerating momentum, well, these people are going to end up being pretty big losers. For if the government catches a whiff that it is now speculative fever that is dominating the uber-hot housing market, well that could very well elicit a response (as in capital gains taxes for those who sell within a year or two).

At some point, a correction would be very healthy because on the other side, owners of homes will then realize that no, they did not win some lottery, and will finally be willing to start listing their property, especially those who deep down want to sell (it could well be that the move-up buyers would like to sell but can’t afford that mansion of their dreams).

Not to mention first-time buyers who do not have the income for a down payment that any lender would consider appropriate. After all, we have hit the bizarre stage where a typical home now (and we are talking about a bungalow in Pape Village, not exactly an estate on Warren Road) would absorb 13 years of median household income.

Not even in the late 1980s, did housing get this expensive on this basis, and we know all too well how the Bank of Canada ultimately reacted and what happened next. Stephen Poloz is definitely no John Crow — though things can always change.     

One caveat should be noted because what is different this time around (oh, how I hate using that phrase) is that Toronto has emerged as a world-class city and the foreign buyer is clearly having an impact.

So while Toronto residential real estate is indeed expensive for the locals, it is far less so for foreign investors, especially for Americans who can buy Canadian assets at a 25 per cent discount from a currency perspective.

In the mid to late 1980s, Toronto did not have the Rogers Center. It did not have the Raptors. It had no decent hotel outside of the Four Seasons and the Windsor Arms. Truly great restaurants were not to be found (unless you want to count Winston’s!). There was no Drake. And Toronto FC was not in existence. Not to mention there was very little in the way of a theater district.

While the separatist threat in Quebec gave Toronto the mantle of being Canada’s financial center back in 1976, the city was never seriously viewed as a global player in this respect until very recently. With more than 250,000 employed in the financial services sector, Toronto has very quietly emerged as the second largest financial hub in North America (after New York). Of the 84 cities surveyed in the 2015 Global Financial Centres Index, Toronto ranked 8th!

So while prices may seem a little nutty, it is important to note that Toronto is a major financial, economic and cultural centre, and when compared to its peers globally, prices appear far less crazy, too.

This doesn’t make the current price action justified based on local income fundamentals, but based on the foreign incomes of those wanting to establish a toehold in a stable Toronto amidst a sea of global instability, the prices are not that much out of whack.

As per data compiled by Global Property Guide, Toronto home prices on a U.S. dollar per square metre basis rank just 14th in the world, well behind the likes of London, New York, Paris and Tokyo.

And at the same time, if you are a family in say, Brooklyn Heights looking to buy property in Toronto it would only absorb six years of income; and if you reside in Santa Monica and feel like dipping your toes in the Toronto real estate market, it would only take up four years of your annual median take-home pay. The same (four years) holds true for those wealthy enough to be living in Knightsbridge.

You see, when Toronto home prices are measured against incomes in other places of the world, it is not nearly as onerous (especially in Canadian dollar terms).

In other words, many well-heeled foreigners can far better afford what the locals can’t afford here, and housing in recent years has truly become in internationally-traded asset class (though I wouldn’t recommend ripping out the foundation and exporting the structure anywhere).

So it goes without saying that if the name of the game is to tame the flame then have the foreign investor share the blame. A tax on foreign transactions, as was already done in Vancouver, seems like a pretty good idea. And the government can at the very least use the revenues to either provide greater tax incentives to build and/or provide tax relief for the low/mid income entry-level buyer who is struggling to cobble together the funds for a down payment.

So yes, in this sense, I would be advocating a Robin Hood style of economic policy.

Indeed, what may be needed is a very progressive tax on foreign buying of local residential real estate in the bid to cool demand and reverse the exponential surge in home prices — a surge that is creating tremendous social problems by crowding out young families (or individuals) from chasing the homeownership dream (a typical response is for these folks is to go out and buy a condo instead, but the reality is that average prices here have also skyrocketed 24 per cent in the past year and are in a bubble of their own).

Everyone says that the Bank of Canada cannot raise interest rates to curb the excess demand because of the deleterious effect this would have on the economy writ large (for example, taking the Canadian dollar back up to or above 80 cents which would thwart our export competitiveness which has become a longstanding role of the central bank).

Be that as it may, the home price surge in the GTA over the past year has impaired homeowner affordability to such an extent that it is basically the equivalent of the Bank of Canada having raised rates 150 basis points — actually a 200 basis point increase if you were to look at what home prices have done to affordability ratios over the past two years (so you can’t have it both ways; the price action is basically equivalent to having five-year mortgage rates closer to 5.75 per cent than the actual posted rate of 3.75 per cent).

Barring a bold move by the government to bring home prices to levels consistent with domestic economic fundamentals as opposed to income levels from well-heeled buyers from the U.S., China, and Europe, maybe it is time for the Bank of Canada to start playing a role and follow the Fed on a gradual rising interest rate path.

It's Bubble Time

Submitted by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

It"s impossible to predict with certainty how much more insane our financial markets will get before an inevitable correction. But my personal bet is: A lot!

For my reasons why, take a few minutes to watch the chapter on bubbles below from The Crash Course. For those who haven"t seen it before, the takeaway is this: bubbles pop only when greed in the market has been exhausted:

Bubbles make no sense economically. Or rationally. But they happen all the time as a part of the human condition.

Even while financial bubbles are enabled by dumb monetary and banking decisions, their actual genesis is rooted in primal human emotions. Greed on the way up, and fear on the way down.

The hardest part about these bubbles is not being swept up in them.  As the above video shows, history is chock full of asset bubbles. We humans just never seem to learn. Like Charlie Brown"s endless attempts to kick Lucy"s football, we get suckered in by the promise of easy riches, only to end up flat on our back when the market suddenly yanks that promise away.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Most of you reading this might be thinking “Hey, I’m a reasonable intelligent person. I won"t fall victim to the next bubble.” Perhaps, but maybe not. The numbers say that the majority of you will. Unfortunately, being smart -- even a genius -- is no protection against being ruined by a bubble.

Remember from the video that even Sir Isaac Newton, easily one of the most brilliant humans ever to live, got his clock cleaned by the South Sea Bubble:

(Source)

Bubbles are much easier to enter than to exit. As they build, all your friends and neighbors are diving into the pool and enjoying easy riches. You deserve some of that good fortune, right? And there will be plenty of eager parties willing to help you get on the bandwagon. 

But when the bubble pops, though, action becomes much harder to take. At first, everyone assumes that the sudden drop is a temporary aberration and that the party will shortly resume. As prices fall further -- and they typically fall at a faster rate than when they were rising -- folks become paralyzed by fear on the way down, slowly realizing that their paper profits may indeed be gone for good. At first they"re unwilling to give up the dream of the "sure thing" they so recently had, and then, once the losses start mounting, they find themselves resistant to locking in those losses by selling. Instead, they hold on to the increasingly threadbare hope that prices will at least recover to where they can ‘get their money back.’

Of course, that never happens. For all those who bought in during the mania, their money was hopelessly betrayed the moment they placed their bet. And that’s what bubbles are – merely bets. And that bet is: I bet I can get out before everyone else.

That’s mathematically impossible for the majority. It’s really only possible for a very tiny few who have the vision and the discipline (and more often than not, the luck) to pull it off. Very rare are the people who get out at the top.

Don"t Be A Victim

So, to avoid becoming victim in the future, the first thing you need is the clarity to know when you have a bubble on your hands.

Well, it really doesn’t get any clearer than this:

Why Toronto (and Other Cities) Inflate Housing Bubbles to the Bitter End

Feb 20, 2017

“Let’s drop the pretense. The Toronto housing market and the many cities surrounding it are in a housing bubble,” Bank of Montreal (BMO) Chief Economist Doug Porter told clients in a note last week.

Many have called it “housing bubble” for a while, but now it’s official, according to BMO.

In January, the benchmark price and the average price were both up 22% year-over-year, with the average price of detached homes up 26%, of semi-detached homes 28%, of townhouses 27%, and of condos 15%. Double-digit price increases have become the rule in recent years.

But this jump was “the fastest increase since the late 1980s – a period pretty much everyone can agree was a true bubble – and a cool 21 percentage points faster than inflation and/or wage growth,” Porter explained in his note, cited by BNN.

(Source)

Holy smokes! Or rather, what are people smoking up there? Bubble weed, or something. A 22% yr/yr gain? On top of a string of recent years of double-digit gains?

Here are two more features about bubbles we need to keep in mind:

1. Bubble exist when prices rise beyond what incomes can sustain


2. Bubbles always have a blow-off top

First, house prices rising a ‘cool’ 21 percentage points above wage growth over a single year is the very definition of bubble behavior. Simple math tells us that anyone who borrows to buy property eventually has to pay that loan back.

The money to pay back that property loan comes from wages. Ergo, property prices and wages cannot depart from each other forever, or even for very long, without a lot of repayment defaults resulting.

As for ending in a "blow-off top", that"s just how history tells us bubbles finally exhaust themselves. They draw in every last sucker and lazy-thinking ‘investor’ until there"s no "greater fool" left willing to pay a higher price. This doesn"t require 100% participation from the local population; only 100% participation from everyone who can be drawn in. When that finally happens, that’s when the bubble bursts all of its own accord.

There"s another way for a bubble to end, but it practically never happens. Responsible bankers and lenders could prevent the bubble"s formation by simply not lending ridiculous amounts. It almost never happens for the same reasons that people buy overpriced houses: greed and our social programming to follow the herd. If all your banker buddies are making big bucks writing loans to anyone who can fog a mirror, then you"ll be rewarded for doing the same. Nobody wants to be the lone, unpopular voice urging restraint when the crowds are going wild.

The quotes below from the 1850’s show how this dynamic is nothing new to society:

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

?Charles Mackay,in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Well, the good people of Toronto -- as well as Vancouver, Palo Alto, Melbourne, and a large number of other real estate markets -- have fixed their minds on the delusion that the recent skyrocketing price appreciation means that home prices will continue to always rise from here. So get in now! You can"t lose! Don"t risk getting priced out of the market!

What particularly crazy about this is that we just saw 10 short years ago how this movie ends. But those caught up in the current mania simply aren"t thinking logically right now. They"re fully captured by the bubble mania.

And, as before, it’s lonely out here for those of us trying to be the voice of sanity and reason. Nobody want’s to hear that now.

And later, once the painful correction has wrought its destruction, those of us who dared to sound an alert may be blamed as responsible for the losses - as if by pointing out the delusion we caused the burst to happen.

Conclusion

I could go on and on, risking being the boy who cried wolf, and point out all the other obvious bubbles infecting our financial landscape that all but assure a very difficult future of financial and economic pain.

But I won’t at this time, having already pointed out the major bubbles in last week"s article, The Mother of All Financial Bubbles.

The delusion much of society wants to believe in is that we can get something for nothing. That is, to become rich, all we have to do is buy an asset like a house or Apple stock and simply wait.

The wealth will just magically arrive. No work performed, nothing new created, nothing done. Just buy, and wait.

Of course, even a cursory examination of all of life in nature (or before humans invented thin-air money printing) quickly reveals that actual wealth comes from hard work, usually coupled with taking risks.

But somehow we’ve slipped back into the common and very human delusion of that our current culture has somehow figured out how to escape the old bonds of wealth creation. This time is different!

The Romans re-minted coins in smaller and less pure weights and it worked! For a while. Then its empire collapsed on itself.

Zimbabwe (and now Venezuela) printed and it worked! For a while. Then its citizens were left impoverished.

Society"s dangerous conceit is in thinking that somehow we’ve managed to, this time, escape the hard rules of wealth creation and have discovered a new principle by which we can all get wealthy without doing anything at all. All you have to do is play the game. Put your money to work! Buy stocks and houses and you can"t go wrong!

And it’s working! For now.

But when we back up a bit, it’s pretty easy to see how this cannot be true. Not for the majority. Why? Because real wealth isn"t a paper gain on a house. Nor is it even money in the bank. Or a large stock portfolio.

Real wealth consists the final things you consume: food, appliances, transportation, entertainment, clothes, energy, etc.

Those are real things. They have to come from somewhere. Which means they have to be produced, stored, transported, and sold. By themselves, your cash and your stock portfolio have no value. Those are merely claims on true wealth.

So how can it be possible for everyone to be exponentially increasing their claims on real wealth, without the underlying pie of real wealth itself, increasing at an equivalent rate?

It’s not.

And that’s the painful lesson that gets learned and re-learned as each new generation gets duped and then dumped by an asset bubble.

Sadly, bubbles used to happen only once in a generation. Once those burned by the last bubble have died off, the younger generation has no living memory to prevent them from getting suckered by the next one. But for some reason, our current generation has something of an addiction to bubbles. We"ve lived through the tech stock bubble, the real estate bubble, and now we"re living inside the "everything" bubble.

What"s wrong with us?

My advice is to sell your house if you live in Toronto, or a similarly bubblicious real estate market. Similarly, reduce your exposure to stocks and bonds at these record highs, and develop a wealth protection strategy with a financial adviser who understands the risks in today"s markets.

Know what the bubble signs are and be smarter than Newton by standing aside, nodding knowingly, and tolerating your "smart" friends and neighbors.

It’s one of the very hardest things to do, but it’s also one of the most important.

Odds are high you"ll be proven the smart one once the current bubble bursts.

And if you haven"t read it yet, read our report How Bad Will It Get? in which we detail the tremendous scale of the losses that will result when this Mother Of All Financial Bubbles collapses. It will be a traumatizing time for society, and many, many people will see their wealth vaporize.

The key objective at this time is to position yourself for physical and financial safety. For those who do will be in a position to prosper greatly, as well as offer much-needed support to others, when the coming reset arrives.

Click here to read the report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)