Navigating the complex landscape of mortgage rates, loans, taxes, and investing can be very daunting, no matter your age. The fear of making a bad decision continues growing as the cost of living rises, but your income does not increase at the same pace. Across the globe, thousands of major cities are facing a similar crisis. Some of them have gotten so bad that people resort to living in overcrowded apartments or renting out their storage space instead. In Canada, the problem is out of control. Regardless of what province you’re looking at, leasing or buying homes in this country is almost twice more expensive than in the US. The main factors causing such a surge in prices in the last decade are supply and demand imbalances caused mainly by development regulations imposed by municipalities and significant population growth resulting from the influx of newcomers to Canada.
Demand for housing will always exist because it is essential for living. Nonetheless, the surge in population resulting from extensive immigration might contribute to housing unaffordability. If the economy starts slowing down, fewer workers will decide to relocate to Canada, but this alone can not solve the problem. Insufficient infrastructure, with stubbornly low wages and high living costs, is an issue affecting Canadians across the country. While this situation is bleak, WOWA.ca is helping people navigate through these choppy waters by offering the free financial data and guides they need.
With over 5.5 million users annually, WOWA.ca is an industry leader in online real estate and financial tools. WOWA.ca helps consumers make prudent financial decisions about their personal finances, such as renting, buying, selling, or managing a property.
Outside of real estate, WOWA.ca provides interactive and visual content for loans, credit cards, investments, taxes, and budgeting. The site has over one million monthly views because of its comprehensive collection of information. Its rate pages, such as its Canada mortgage rate page, lists almost all Canadian lenders on its website, which is rare in Canada. Its housing market pages are the most popular housing resource pages in the country because of their interactive maps showing changes in home prices across the country.
Canadian housing unaffordability is not a temporary problem. Even before recent rate hikes, Toronto and Vancouver were listed as some of the least affordable cities in the world. Housing prices in Toronto are nine and a half times more than the median annual household income while Vancouver is twelve times more expensive, putting these two cities in bubble territory according to the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index.
Housing supply in Canada has such a difficult time matching demand because regulations restrict the speed that new homes can be built. While this is changing, the elasticity is increasing too. This means the average number of people in each home can grow as people sublease rooms or basements in their own homes to make ends meet. Founder of WOWA.ca, Hanif Bayat, predicts this problem will remain unless there is a significant change in development regulations and immigration policies.
Hanif has a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Toronto and an impressive career working as a quant for major Canadian banks. After over five years in the banking world, he decided to found WOWA.ca because of his interest in real estate platforms. Originally, the company was made as a marketplace for real estate agents, but Hanif quickly realized that providing trustworthy and transparent resources of financial information was a much more important need for Canadians. Hanif saw the trends influencing the housing market and felt that people really needed unbiased content and financial data to make responsible decisions.
“WOWA.ca provides accurate, unbiased financial data, which allows Canadians to know all their options.” says Hanif Bayat, “In addition to that, we want to help people make more informed financial decisions about any aspect of living, whether it be saving for down payments, opening saving accounts, choosing credit cards, child benefits or buying a home. So we try to tackle any issue that Canadians may face in their daily life and offer them accurate, unbiased information so they feel confident in their decision making."
In the next six months, Hanif predicts that interest rates will remain elevated, which translates to high mortgage payments that may force some rental property owners to sell their investment properties. He believes fear will rule the market for buyers for a while and drive demand down. However, during 2024, Hanif anticipates a slight rise in home prices before it eventually levels out by 2025 when changes in population growth and regulation stabilize supply and demand in the market.
“While numerous global cities grapple with a cost of living crisis, Canada's housing market predicament stands out as particularly worrisome. The mortgage expenses in Canada are notably responsive to interest rates, given the frequent renewal of mortgages, with most Canadians holding 5-year or shorter term mortgages. In addition to this, home prices are already very high, caused by the strict regulations for developments and significant population growth furthering the imbalance of supply and demand. To effectively address this matter, it's imperative to implement more strategic immigration policies and streamline development regulations. However, providing information also stands as a valuable approach to aiding Canadians in navigating this affordability crisis. By staying informed, individuals can make sounder financial choices, ultimately working toward achieving financial freedom.” Bayat explains.
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