Canadian Residential Mortgage Market: Inflation & Interest Rates: the Lead Characters for 2023

Summary:

  1. The Bank of Canada (BOC) increased interest rates 7 times in 2022. Exactly as expected 16 months ago.
  2. Inflation is at least 5.7%; and it needs to get down to 3%
  3. The BoC would rather over-tighten than under-tighten
  4. Normally it takes 18 to 24 months for interest rate increases to work their way into the economy and we are only about 10 months into this tightening cycle

These 4 painful data points mean Prime will increase from 6.45% to 6.70% on Jan 25th.

We now expect there to be at least 1 or 2 more o.25% increases to Prime before it is expected to hold for the rest of 2023, and then begin to decrease in 2024. Read More