Housing affordability shows biggest improvement in nearly 5 years in Q1. Why?

Canada's housing market saw 'widespread' improvements in affordability last quarter, but National Bank economists note it's still 'hardly an accessible level.'

A “trifecta” of conditions in Canada’s housing market last quarter translated into the biggest improvement in affordability since 2019, National Bank of Canada said Thursday.

The institution’s Housing Affordability Monitor showed “widespread” improvement in each of the 10 largest markets it tracks. National Bank gauges housing affordability by tracking the mortgage payment as a percentage of income for the median home price.

This statistic fell 3.1 percentage points to 58.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, marking the largest quarter-to-quarter improvement since Q2 of 2019.

That came after the bank’s affordability monitor stood at its worst levels since the 1980s to the end of 2023.

National Bank said the “greatest” improvement was seen in Canada’s three least affordable housing markets of Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria, thanks to relatively steeper drops in home prices in the quarter.

Mortgage payments as a percentage of income dropped 5.7 percentage points to 84.4 per cent for non-condo properties in Toronto last quarter and declined 2.7 percentage points to 50.2 per cent for condos. Vancouver had even steeper drops of 8.9 points and 3.8 points for non-condo and condo properties, respectively.

The boost in housing affordability was driven by a “trifecta” of conditions as home prices softened, median incomes rose and mortgage rates fell, National Bank economists Kyle Dahms and Alexandra Ducharme said in the report.

While the Bank of Canada has maintained its policy rate at 5.0 per cent in each of its meetings so far this year, the authors note market expectations for rate cuts helped to push down the benchmark five-year mortgage rate by 32 basis points in the first quarter.