A report from the Canadian Press. "Canadians looking to borrow money for a home purchase a home are in for some extra challenges after the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced changes to its lending standards on Thursday. The country’s national housing agency is increasing the qualifying credit score for mortgage insurance to 680 from 600 and limiting gross and total debt servicing ratios to their standards of 35 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively."

"'COVID-19 has exposed long-standing vulnerabilities in our financial markets, and we must act now to protect the economic futures of Canadians,' CMHC head Evan Siddall said in a statement. 'These actions will protect homebuyers, reduce government and taxpayer risk and support the stability of housing markets while curtailing excessive demand and unsustainable house price growth.'"

"Under the changes effective July 1, CMHC will also no longer treat non-traditional sources of down payment funding, such as a personal unsecured line of credit, as equity for insurance purposes. It will also suspend refinancing for most multi-unit mortgage insurance. The move comes just weeks after Siddall appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance in Ottawa to warn of trouble ahead for the housing market."

"'Our support for home ownership cannot be unlimited,' he said. 'Home ownership is like blood pressure: you can have too much of it. Housing demand is far easier to stimulate than supply and the result, as we’ve seen, is Economics 101: ever-increasing prices.'"

The Globe and Mail. "The new criteria, effective July 1, are designed to help weed out borrowers who are less likely to make their payments and could reduce demand for homes at a time when real estate sales have dropped. 'The purpose of this is to eliminate demand that is viewed as too risky,' said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist with CIBC. 'It is consistent with the way CMHC is viewing the housing market at the moment. They are trying to eliminate risk.'"

"The most recent national data show sales from March to April falling nearly 60 per cent and the average selling price across all types of residential properties down 10.9 per cent. Banks have provided mortgage deferrals of up to six months for about 15 per cent of their residential loan portfolio. CMHC has forecast that home prices could drop as much as 18 per cent over the next 12 months."

From Now Toronto. "The new rules will limit both mortgage eligibility and purchasing power for a very small segment of the market place in Toronto, says Steven Parks, a broker at Redpath Financial. CMHC insured-mortgages only apply to homes purchased for less than $1,000,000. There aren’t a lot of those here. 'They are taking what’s already conservative approach and making it a little more conservative,' says Parks."

"Odeen Eccleston, a broker at WE Realty, primarily works in suburban areas. She has yet to see significant dips in pricing but is believes a price drop could still happen. 'This past month, we definitely saw more lowball offers being submitted,' says Eccleston. 'Whereas sellers were refusing to even look at these types of offers at the beginning of the pandemic, some are reaching the point of realization that they may now have to entertain less than what they expected pre-COVID-19.'"

From Global News. "Home builders in Regina and Saskatoon are staying optimistic about home sales, despite Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation stating otherwise. 'The harsh forecast released by CMHC really only reflects a 'best guess' of what might happen in the housing market over the next year,' said Stu Niebergall, Regina & Region Home Builders’ Association CEO. 'Their predictions come off a bit like someone running into a room screaming ‘fire!’ when things are hot, but no one has seen any smoke or flames yet.'"

The Huffington Post. "The spat between Canada’s government-run mortgage insurer and the country’s residential real estate industry appears to have been a big misunderstanding over units of measurement. Notably, the average selling price in Canada has already fallen more than the CMHC’s best-case scenario of a 9-per-cent drop; it fell nearly 11 per cent in April alone."

From Mortgage Broker News. "Toronto’s rental property owners are gradually losing hope as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, according to RE/MAX. A significant contributor to the gloom is the almost-overnight collapse of Airbnb, which suffered much-reduced bookings once the coronavirus took hold of the global economy. RE/MAX said that these developments have left Toronto’s landlords over-leveraged and susceptible to market volatility."

"'Many real estate investors were reaping the benefits of Airbnb-style short-term rentals, where the profit margin was so much greater than a traditional lease,' RE/MAX said. 'With the closing of the US/Canada border and the imposed stay at home measures, the demand for short-term rentals disappeared overnight, and now some investors are left scrambling to find tenants for their vacant spaces.'"

"'Since the closure of non-essential businesses across the city in late March, many tenants are struggling to make rent payments. This will inevitably put downward pressure on demand for a brief period of time, even after protection measures have been lifted,' RE/MAX said. 'This extra supply flooding the rental markets, coupled with depressed demand levels, means there is potential for average rental rates to decline within the Greater Toronto Area. This anticipated drop in rent prices and competition may translate to a less stressful home search for new renters, post-crisis.'"

The Vancouver Sun. "Is Canada returning to the 1990s, when tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents fearing China’s authoritarianism crossed the Pacific Ocean to buy property and a safe haven in Toronto and Vancouver? Some Canadian realtors have suggested as much during the past year of clashes in Hong Kong. However, there does not seem to be a strong flow of returnees, for many reasons."

"Lily Wu, a Vancouver-based chartered accountant, noted that last year, when protests were peaking in Hong Kong, a handful of Vancouver realtors obtained attention in the media by claiming Hongkongers were flooding back into the city’s housing market."

"'But it didn’t amount to anything. The realtors were just trying to scare people into thinking they had to buy in Vancouver. They were trying to create a fear of missing out,' said Wu, who has colleagues, clients and family with links to both Hong Kong and Canada."