The real estate meltdown: now it’s officially official

You no longer have to take my word for it. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record (a nostalgia-laden title that is increasingly meaningless, but that comes in handy in times like this when I want to buttress an argument of my own), is today reporting that housing sales are down across the country by a whopping 18.7 per cent in March over the previous year. Even the bank economists are now off the bandwagon.

There are other views, of course. If you’re looking for a sunnier view of things, just ask a local real estate agent—you know, any one of those thousands of agents that a friend of mine calls “pathological realtors,” the kind who have mortgage rates coursing through their bloodstream and who can’t answer a question as innocuous as “how’s your son doing at school?” without reference to land-transfer taxes. Or perhaps it’s best to simply hole up and console yourself with whichever fictions about value preservation—close to transit, great bones, lots of frontage, Starbucks within walking distance—you purchased along with your house. But do it over a cheaper bottle of wine. And hope the Starbucks doesn’t board up any time soon. The daily latte is a likely first casualty of tighter household budgets.