Don't treat your home as an "investment" is probably the best advice: simply a nice place in nice location that you want to spend the next decade or so, and move on with life.
Any gains you see financially will be decades down the road when (a) you don't have rent to pay after the mortgage is paid off†, or (b) you can no longer live independently and sell it to pay for an old-age home.
I don't think we can learn anything. The whole dynamic is different. Interest rates, BoC/FED Gov are too invested in keeping the market going to allow it to correct. People have stretched themselves to the limits with debt. Then you have incredible capital outflows from Asia just parking money in Canadian Real Estate.
For ever distressed Canadian sale, there will be 100's of billions of foreign $$$ waiting to snatch it up.
It is truly remarkable what a young Canadian faces today when it comes to enjoying what previous generations took for granted. A good job or career, a house or property, etc. It just isn't going to happen for the majority of them.
If this was really the case, wouldn't we expect large numbers of Canadian homes to be sitting empty? Or to have a rental market with high vacancy rates at the expense of a tight sales market? In Vancouver at least, we don't see either of those. But the population keeps exploding (2%/year for the metro area) and people keep protesting development. What's the most straight-forward explanation for this?
> Of course, you need to keep in mind that the stock market can remain irrational a lot longer than you can remain solvent.
* https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Shilling
Don't treat your home as an "investment" is probably the best advice: simply a nice place in nice location that you want to spend the next decade or so, and move on with life.
Any gains you see financially will be decades down the road when (a) you don't have rent to pay after the mortgage is paid off†, or (b) you can no longer live independently and sell it to pay for an old-age home.
† But taxes and maintenance still exist.