Now that we have 2023 behind us, everyone is looking ahead to 2024 and trying to come up with best guesses for what the year has in store. Making predictions is, at best, an inexact science, and although I have almost 40 years of experience behind me, the best I can ever come up with our educated guesses, with the emphasis on “guess.”

However, there are many things that I’m confident about putting down on paper, so here are some fearless forecasts for 2024

  1. Interest rates will come down in 2023, but not as quickly as many of us might hope. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re hoping to see the return of 2% mortgages anytime soon; I think that is delusional. By mid-year, we should start to see rates come down 1/4% from where they currently are, then another 2 or 3 similar rate reductions by year-end. The best 5-year fixed rates in Canada are currently at 4.89% – that could come down to about 4% by late 2024.
  2. Listing inventories remain low. Although some people are questioning their 2021 COVID-19 cottage purchases, most are not wholesale dumping their purchases. Much has been written about markets being flooded with cottages and homes people no longer want, but I don’t see it.
  3. Balanced market conditions (where the number of buyers roughly equals the number of sellers) will stabilize pricing, with prices staying more or less than the same year to year. We saw some prices decrease significantly in 2023 (hello, vacant land) while other properties, like single-family homes and accessible waterfront cottages, remain stable.
  4. Waiting to scoop up bargain basement bank-owned properties/ powers of sales? Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t see this in 2024. Typically, we would start getting calls from mortgage people with properties they’d be anticipating going up for sale because of delinquent mortgages, but I have had only one of these calls/emails in the past year.

We’ll get through this winter and the year’s balance without experiencing a recession. If you asked me about the odds of a recession in Canada only six months ago, with 80% certainty, we’d experience a mild post-COVID recession in Canada. Fast forward to 2024, and with similar odds, I’m saying there will be no recession this year.