I recently attended a housing market forecast on the Toronto Real Estate Market put on by the Welbanks mortgage group in conjunction with Genworth Canada.

Now I typically attend 2-3 of these type of information sessions annually but this was the first where I could recall the statement being said that, “Toronto could become a housing market of renters” in ten years’ time!

My ears perked up, and for a moment I was asking myself, did I hear that correctly?

Yes!! It was correct. Real estate would be so expensive only the rich could buy and most would be renting!

Based on recent comments by two housing economists (Will Dunning and Benjamin Tal) it seems a comment was made along the lines of, “if you think house prices are expensive now, wait and see what it will be like in 5-10 years’ time.”

Now to be fair, I did not hear this quote directly from the source, or, what it’s intended context was. It was repeated by the presenter from Genworth from a presentation she had recently  attended. But the sheer thought of this had my heart palpitating. I mean, already it is incredibly expensive and difficult to purchase and own a property in Toronto. We keep hearing about over leveraged consumers, a housing bubble, a lot of high risk in our housing markets.

And it’s going to get worse?

Well, I’ve heard a lot of over the past 10 years on unstainable housing values that have proven to be untrue. And I also once recall Craig Alexander who was an economist at TD Bank at the time, say, about Toronto’s unexplainable increasing house values…”that even in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Eventually the Wolf does show up.” This was said in context that “for the past few years he stood before us saying house prices would correct by at least 10% and then he would show up the next year and they were higher.” This would have been about 5-6 years ago.

So it seems no one really knows what will happen? But if this statement holds true about a city of renters, all of the current problems we have experienced over the past many years is about to become a lot worse. For the sake of many, I hope this too turns out to be false.