This Week’s Top Stories: Canadian Home Prices Back To 2016 Levels, and Rents Surged Before Population

Time for your cheat sheet on this week’s top stories. Canadian Real Estate Canadian Home Prices Back To 2016 Levels After Inflation, Still Out of Reach Canadian home prices rose—just not in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. BIS data shows home prices in Canada rose 0.78% in Q2 2026, the first increase in a year—though they remain 19.5% below peak. When adjusted to real terms, they slipped again and have fallen nearly 30% since the peak. Home prices are back to 2016 levels after inflation, but affordability isn’t. Continue Reading… Canadian Rents Surged 20%, But the BoC Can’t Explain How It Started A new Bank of Canada (BoC) study shows asking rents surged over 20% between Q4 2021 and Q4 2026. The researcher shows that population growth and financing explain most growth over the period. What remains a mystery is the year-over-year surge in rents in early 2020, before the pandemic. Most of this growth is “unexplained,” according to the report. This leaves the question: Did a speculative rental bubble drive policymakers to adopt aggressive population growth? Continue Reading… Canada’s International Student Drop Offset By Domestic Surge Domestic postsecondary enrollment surged in Canada...