Big news is that the mortgage rates increased this week by a quarter point. People are all asking what it's going to do to the market? And the answer is... nothing. It's not going to do a thing.  I ran some numbers and they say that the average mortgage is $400,000 - which is a crazy number.  It's not really that - it's way higher, closer to $600,000 or $700,000.  I ran some numbers based on a $670,000 mortgage, which is pretty typical. If you bought a house in 2015 and you paid about $500-$600K for it, it's worth about $1.4M now - you've got equity, so you move up to a bigger house at let's say $1.7M and now you've got a $600K or $700K mortgage.  So your mortgage payments would be around $2400 right now and a quarter point increase would be about $82 per month. So, we aren't really going to see the effects of mortgage hikes much until it gets into the 5th or 6th rate hike.  But I think what is going to affect the market more right now is the fact that the pricing is still so high.  Things are going up so quickly that it's effectively going to take people right out of the market. When that happens, it's going to soften things.
 
Last weekend, I did a deal outside of the GTA and there were only 2 offers on it. Meanwhile, I had a client interested in a property in rural Milton yesterday which had 19 offers and sold for $900K over the asking price, believe it or not.  The asking price was too low (obviously), but I'm seeing "pockets" forming now. Some pockets are starting to slow, and others are doing really great.  It reminds me a bit of last summer where you had some areas that were slow and then you had other areas that were really rocking.

So, as far as the mortgage hike - a quarter point isn't really going to affect anything.  It's going to take a bit for the effects to come through.  If you combine the two - the rate increase, combined with the fact that the prices are still so high - it's got to eventually slow things. When is it coming?  That's the million dollar question.  Right now, it's still very active and still a good time to sell!