If it was just Vancouver and Toronto that would be one thing, but housing across Canada (except perhaps the maritimes) has seen huge gains in the last decade, far beyond income growth.
These price increases have been excluded from inflation (price inflation) numbers, as has the massive growth in consumer credit (monetary inflation). I don't have an article for you, but Canada has surpassed the US at the peak of their housing bubble in most any metric you look at, some of them substantially. Unsurprisingly, convincing anyone to acknowledge this reality is near impossible, the numbers can stare people in the face and they simple refuse to believe them.
> If it was just Vancouver and Toronto that would be one thing, but housing across Canada (except perhaps the maritimes) has seen huge gains in the last decade
The biggest trouble with Canadian data is that, unlike most of the rest of the world, they calculate it using the mean. A figure that is easily skewed by the sale of multi-million dollar mansions, which means little to the typical family budgeting for a home. It is true that the average home nationwide has risen substantially, but mainly because of Toronto and Vancouver specifically. Median home prices would be much more useful here, but data is nonexistent (as far as I can tell).
As for the growth, inflation over the period is 16%, so you would expect that much for sure. Historically, houses have followed inflation. Conveniently, I purchased my Canadian (non-Maritime, non-Toronto/Vancouver) home 10 years ago, and that sounds just about right for what I could expect to get out of it a decade on. Maybe slightly more, but the local economy has also improved dramatically in that timeframe, so I expect the locals have seen real increases in their income as well. The best data I can find for the localized area seems to confirm that.
> far beyond income growth.
The government redesigned their website and I have never been able to find it again, but they used to have a really good chart showing incomes over time. For most, their incomes have been been stagnant in real (adjusted for inflation) dollars. That is true. However, the income of the top 20% has skyrocket in the last 10-15 years. The most liberal figure I have ever seen for sales volume in the GTA is 80,000 units per year. A region with 2.6 million households. That is just 3%. It may be a bit of a misnomer to think that average people are buying places at all. If only 3% per year in the GTA are buying homes, that can easily be satisfied by the top 20% who are making huge income gains, especially when you consider that they can buy more than one home.
> Inflation over the period is 16%, so you would expect that much for sure. Historically, houses have followed inflation. Conveniently, I purchased my Canadian (non-Maritime, non-Toronto/Vancouver) home 10 years ago, and that sounds just about right for what I could expect to get out of it a decade on.
Are you saying that your house in non-maritimes Canada has only appreciated 16% in the last decade? Are you able to disclose where this is, because I might move there.
It's so strange to me to see articles like the above, charts like this: http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/canadas-hous..., read newspaper articles from around the world discussing our bubble, but then encounter people like yourself who witness literally nothing historically unusual, at all. It is truly bizarre.
These price increases have been excluded from inflation (price inflation) numbers, as has the massive growth in consumer credit (monetary inflation). I don't have an article for you, but Canada has surpassed the US at the peak of their housing bubble in most any metric you look at, some of them substantially. Unsurprisingly, convincing anyone to acknowledge this reality is near impossible, the numbers can stare people in the face and they simple refuse to believe them.