In 2016, the new housing market will...

“Once again, experts agree that housing affordability is stretched, historically low interest rates will rise, and housing prices will drop. Rewind 365 days and you could be reading a forecast for 2014. But this time the experts agree: prices really will fall and it’s got everything to do with the recovery of the global economy,” said MoneySense magazine in January 2015.

They really didn’t. In fact, they went up. We saw average detached homes in Toronto top the $1 million mark this fall.

In October, the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index said Vancouver’s housing market was “significantly overvalued” and about to bubble over. The CMHC disagreed, saying Vancouver was at low risk of correction. They instead predicted that Toronto (as well as Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon) were most in danger of a sharp correction. In November, the OECD warned that the government had better cool housing prices somehow or Toronto and Vancouver were likely to experience sharp corrections. We haven’t.

‘Tis the season once again to try to predict what next year will bring. I expect that many pundits will once again predict dire things for next year’s housing market — although the CMHC this fall predicted a more cautious outlook than past years, saying an increase in housing prices was likely to barely keep up with inflation through 2017.

But “keeping pace” is not exactly a glamourous outlook, and I expect we’ll get a rash of “bubble-bursters” over the next few weeks. After repeating the same predictions for the past couple of years, I just wonder how they’ll do it. Maybe they’ll just add another “really” or two. I mean, if you print that prices “really, really will fall,” then surely they must, right?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

***

It was a big year for citizens and sports fans.

Whatever your politics, there’s little arguing that Justin Trudeau’s election is the most romantic thing to happen in Canada recently. He’s in Vogue, he’s been invited to an official white house dinner, he’s being hailed as the most prime of Prime Ministers, with many a social media site naming him the world’s sexiest head of state. You may not have voted for him, but he’s got the world talking about Canada again, and his first weeks in office have been a flurry of activity.

Hogtown baseball fans had a year to remember, as the Jays made the playoffs for the first time in 22 years. The federal election and the Jays were in fact the top two Google Canada searches of the year — with the latter the hands-down winner.

The Pan Am Games took over summer in the city, eliciting complaints from many commuters as new HOV lanes took over area highways, but in the end, the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games were deemed a success by most.

As we bid goodbye to 2015 (and the New in Homes newsletter until the new year), we wish you the happiest of holidays and a healthy and prosperous 2016.