During the first week of November, the reminders were everywhere: “Change your clocks, check your batteries”. The end of Daylight Savings is a great time to check your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to ensure they are in good working order. Although the majority of properties are equipped with this equipment, many are overlooked. Functioning smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are critical to fire safety and reduce the risk of fire related death by nearly 50%. Another key aspect of fire safety is having up-to-date Fire Emergency and Fire Exit plans. When was the last time you reviewed yours? 

According to the National Fire Code of Canada, the fire safety plan of a building must be reviewed at least every 12 months, but in reality, your fire plan should be reviewed whenever there are changes to the floor plan. As noted in our April blog post, changing trends in remote work have created opportunities to alter workspaces, renovate offices, or even convert buildings to adapt to today’s commercial real estate environment. It is important to review your Fire Emergency and Fire Exit plans whenever these changes take place to ensure they are an accurate representation of your space’s current configuration and use. An outdated fire safety plan may be of little help in the event of a fire. 

Having a fresh look at your Fire Safety Plan can also identify opportunities to make changes to your fire safety equipment—especially if your property is undergoing renovations. Regular reviews of your fire safety plans also helps to ensure adherence to evolving building codes and fire safety regulations.

Don’t have a Fire Emergency or Fire Exit plan? Our Lasercad® division can assist in creating or updating these by measuring the space and laying out a clear exit path, as well as identifying the locations of safety equipment for your tenants.

HST Self-Supply on new apartment buildings has been around for a long time. We were first introduced to the world of HST (or GST as it was then known) back in 1990 at a seminar put on by one of the leading accounting companies to help the appraisal profession adjust to the new rules.  GST was officially launched in January 1991 and the world of Self-Supply was unleashed. For the first 35 years or so it lay relatively dormant with scarcely a call to our offices from new apartment builders, who are the most affected by the new rules. Rarely were we consulted on Self-Supply valuations.  Everyone was seemingly happy in apartment land. But the last 5 years has erupted with calls coming in on a regular basis from clients old and new, anxious to escape the inevitable battle with CRA’s auditors and appraisers. (For those looking for a tutorial, see our blog post of August 24^th, 2016, “HST Self-Supply Rules: Is CRA on the Warpath”.  And feel the pain).

Undoubtedly the biggest practical problem for apartment builders is the uncertainty it leaves after the building has been completed. HST on new buildings is based on “Fair Market Value”, not on the cost of construction.  The latter is easily calculated because ITC’s (Input Tax Credits) will have been filed with CRA throughout the construction process. The former – “Fair Market Value” - cannot be calculated until the building is completed and it is, like any market value figure, just an opinion.  But CRA’s opinion increasingly is at odds with the builder’s opinion. To make matters worse, CRA’s review will come along well after the building has been finished, and therefore well after the mortgage financing has been committed, and occasionally even after the building has been sold.  In jurisdictions with regulatory rent controls, rents too will have been committed. In short, the final HST tax bill comes in well after all the dust has (literally) settled. Too bad that it can’t be agreed in advance, or based on something more predictable than “Fair Market Value”.

 "Just levelling the playing field..."

The reasoning behind the Self-Supply rules is succinctly laid out in an official CRA publication (GST/HST Memoranda series 19.2.3, paragraph 5) which begins “Purpose of self-supply rules: level playing field”. In essence, it is an attempt to put the builder who wants to keep the building on the same footing as an investor who wants to buy it. The selling price will (fingers crossed) include a profit component for the builder and that’s what CRA wants a piece of.  It’s difficult to argue with the principle, but what it overlooks is that HST is just another construction cost to be recovered through the eventual selling price. If HST is charged on the elusive profit component, it simply adds to the cost of the building and hence adds to the selling price. The builder pays tax on the profit and recovers it from the purchaser as part of the selling price. The playing field is level. But if no tax is charged on the elusive profit component, the cost of the building is marginally lower and, assuming a balanced market, the selling price will be marginally lower.  The playing field remains level, just slightly smaller. CRA’s concern is that the tax on the builder’s profit will simply end up in the builder’s pocket, but a competitive market will address that. Viewed from that angle, the pain, anguish and sleepless nights endured by the builder waiting to settle the tax bill with CRA is more to do with the size of the playing field than its degree of tilt. All of that pain and anguish could be removed if the tax on profit were a predictable formula, agreed in advance, rather than an elusive opinion coming after the show is over.

HST on Apartment Rents

So, what if the profit – or rather the tax thereon – is occasionally underestimated? Eventually it is the end user who pays the HST on goods and services anyway. That’s how value-added taxes work. For apartment buildings that means the tenant ultimately bears the cost of the builder’s HST, even though residential rental property is, for the most part, officially exempt from HST. Rents must be sufficient to recover all of the costs or else buildings don’t get built. So that troublesome tax on the builder’s profit ultimately shuffles through to the tenants.  Is it a bad thing to give tenants a break these days?  And for more on THAT debate, check out our recent June 21^st blog, “Affordable, Attainable, Available”. 

Boy howdy, let me tell you how tempting it is today to write another blog post about housing, what with a new majority provincial government, and the shameful campaign of homelessness evictions launched by HRM. It's a topic we will be sure to revisit soon, but the honest truth is a while ago I started writing this piece about a different issue in pressing need of attention, and there just is not the time to pivot. 

That other issue, of course, is the long emergency of climate change. A long emergency that is rapidly becoming shorter according to the recently released 6^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The outlook is grim, with some irreversible effects of climate change now baked into our future, and an ever-diminishing window of opportunity to take action and head off the worst. This is ‘code red for humanity’ as put by UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

A few months ago, I turned 35. Old man, I know. But even from here, just past the threshold of maturity, let me tell you that aging is a hell of a trip. With a few decades and milestones under my belt, I can now regularly perceive the arc of time, but still hold clearly in my mind the memories of early childhood when nothing existed beyond the “now”. I can vividly remember, for example, sitting in the school library in Grade 4 and learning about the Montreal Protocol and how it reversed the depletion of the ozone layer (something very topical to a pasty redhead with British genes). I remember learning how something called the Kyoto Protocol was going to help prevent a different environmental crisis called Global Warming. It felt like an imperceptible eon away at the time, what a different world we would be facing if that had panned out.

My daughter turned 5 this spring and at the moment her “now” is a lot more focused on Covid than climate, but that will probably change soon. That long arc of time leading to climate-driven environmental and social crises has converged with the now. As the IPCC report lays out, our window of opportunity to shape future impacts and head off the worst is running out. Not in imperceptible eons, not in generations, but in a decade (singular), in near-term political cycles. In all likeliness, I will know whether or not my daughter is inheriting a disastrous +2°C world before I know whether or not she’s passed her driver’s test.

But even that sentiment downplays the issue. In fact, we are already living with the impacts of climate change and it’s easy to find the real estate angle. Earlier this week our social media accounts shared this article from the CBC examining the lack of climate risk information in the typical real estate transaction process. The topic is presented against the background of raging wildfires in the BC interior, which have destroyed numerous homes and disrupted even more communities. This is already leading to some early musings that the housing markets of Vancouver Island could see a groundswell of demand pressure over the long term as people are increasingly motivated to move upwind of areas where “50-year fires” are now happening multiple times in a decade, threatening life and shelter, and choking out the rest.

So far, the smoke is dissipating before it reaches this side of the continent, so our concerns are not so focused on forest fires (though, not to be ignored). Sea level rise and flooding are the risks du jour. We’ve visited this topic a number of times already, in research articles from 2006, 2007, 2013, 2016, and most recently 2019. It’s a subject that we care about and have integrated into our valuation practice, adding a climate risk section to our standard reports just a few years ago. But as one small firm in this big industry it is difficult for us to push that envelope.

Well, reality is on its way to force the issue. Back in the fall of last year the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper from a couple good eggs at the Wharton School examining the capitalization of climate risk in real estate prices. More specifically, their analysis of home sales in coastal areas of Florida noted that properties more exposed to the risks of Sea Level Rise started to see lagging sales volumes in the early 2010s, with price appreciation starting its underperformance a few years later. Their conclusion is this is a demand-side trend, buyers are now thinking about climate change in the timespan of their own mortgage term! Here’s the money chart:

This trend is just starting, and with the IPCC telling us that a +1.5°C world is now unavoidable, it will only grow in impact in the years to come. Not eons, not generations, years. We’ll continue to look for ways to integrate climate risk assessment into our work, and we recommend that anyone considering a real estate acquisition these days do the same. Even if you don’t expect to own the property long enough for sea level rise and other climate impacts to physically threaten your asset, the next buyer sure could be, and property values look to be a leading indicator now, not a trailing one. In other words, without due care, your mortgage could be underwater long before the property itself is.

June 28, 2021 marked the twenty-eight year anniversary of my employment at Turner Drake.  Time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Originally hired, trained and educated as a commercial appraiser, I’ve spent the majority of my career in our Property Tax Division. True to our in-house training program of the time, I was hired freshly graduated from University; started as a trainee valuer; moved into a Manager’s role six years later, and then, commencing in 2006, became divisional Vice-President, where I lead a team of six. That team assists hundreds of owners every year in mitigating their tax burdens. 

Twenty-eight years in property tax translates into tens of thousands of appeals filed and, over the course of addressing those appeals, some recurring themes have emerged. I’ll discuss them below…and in the process, try to do a little bit of property tax myth-busting.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Assessment

If you own property in Nova Scotia, it’s tempting (and, with the information available online free-of-charge, relatively easy) to compare your assessment to competing properties. For some owners I’ve encountered, logging on to assessment sites and feverishly clicking on surrounding properties has become sport…in some cases, bordering on an obsession.

While comparable assessments are undeniably a useful benchmark, as well as a helpful tool to identify an over-assessment (we do it too!); and while some assessors will even consider assessments on similar properties as grounds for reducing an assessment at the (relatively informal) initial appeal review stage, the fact that your assessment compares unfavourably to others will carry no weight before Nova Scotia’s administrative Tribunals, Boards, and Courts.

Nova Scotia’s Assessment Act requires uniformity of assessment…but legislated uniformity is achieved across entire classes of property in a Municipality (and there are only two such classes of property: residential and commercial). Sadly, ensuring that your property’s assessment is consistent with similar properties does not ensure uniformity.  This is one of the most common misconceptions that we encounter in dealing with property appellants.

And don’t even get me started on New Brunswick, where there is no uniformity or equity provisions in the assessment legislation- none! Comparable assessments have zero evidentiary value. Sad, but true. There are reform moves afoot to address the issue, but given the current glacial pace, I may be another twenty-eight years in before they come to fruition.

The Best Opportunity to Reduce Your Assessment (and Taxes) is NOT on Appeal

In every Province in which we operate, assessing authorities are willing to discuss assessments prior to those values being inserted onto the official assessment rolls. In our experience, such preliminary consultations often produce better results- at lower cost- that waiting to file formal appeals. A number of provinces- Nova Scotia among them- fully embrace the opportunity to discuss proposed values and to make changes, where required, at the “pre-roll” (referred to also as the “advance notification”) stage.

Of course, it’s not always possible to do so, as values may not be available with sufficient lead time in advance of the filing of the roll. But where the opportunity presents itself, my advice is always to be proactive, and to address a problem before it becomes one.  A stitch in time really does save nine.  

(Nova Scotia owners, take note: the opportunity to pre-negotiate your 2022 assessment- the first assessment year when the COVID-19 pandemic will be technically relevant for assessment purposes- will open in mid-to-late September.  Carpe diem).

Not Every Property is Overassessed

There. I’ve said it. 

It’s the truth- not every property offers the opportunity for tax relief. My colleagues and I take many, many calls where we have to break that unwelcome news to owners…sometimes in spite of a double- digit increase, or an assessment that exceeds its neighbours by a considerable margin, or a revenue stream that has tanked due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, for every appeal we file, there is probably a second property that was reviewed and its value accepted. 

Assessors- They’re Just Like Us.

They worry about mixing vaccines. They wonder about going gluten-free. They drive their kids to countless sport practices and extracurricular activities. They think about work while they’re walking the dog.  They fret about how they look on Zoom calls. And, for the most part, they’re well educated and professional, and open to reasoned argument. That’s not to say that we don’t take the gloves off from time to time. But professional relationships built on mutual respect with assessors from across the country have allowed for the settlement of hundreds of appeals every year without the need for Board and Court appearances.   

Giselle Kakamousias is the Vice-President of Turner Drake’s Property Tax Division. Her experience negotiating and appealing property assessments is extensive: it is a wise property owner who follows her advice. If you’d like more of it, she can be reached at (902) 429-1811 ext. 333 or gkakamousias@turnerdrake.com.  

Affordable housing has been a hot topic in recent years, and is even more so now as rental vacancy rates are extremely tight and housing prices have experienced record rates of increase in Atlantic Canada.  A recent news article caught my attention, with its reference to a price point – “attainable” – I haven’t heard as much about, and it inspired me to take a look at what the difference is, and how each lines up with Atlantic Canadian markets.  Then, because alliterations sound better in threes, I needed a third A: the obvious choice in this context is to look at availability.

First, the definitions, a slipperier thing to pin down than one might imagine.  Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) defines affordable housing as housing that costs less than 30% of a household’s before-tax (gross) income, absent any requirement for the housing to be provided or made possible through a government program, and without restriction on tenure or type. 

With that definition, affordability is very much relative: in theory, a $4.3-million home would be “affordable”, provided your household income is $300,000 – about 1.7% of Atlantic Canadian households.  

…housing which is deemed affordable to those with a median household income or below as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index.

After listing a property for sale, you receive an offer from a prospective buyer. Then, before you’re able to present the offer to your seller-client, a second and third offer arrive with all of the buyers and their agents impatiently waiting for answers.

While handling multiple offers requires more diplomacy than handling a single offer, from a business standpoint there is really little room for complaint here. You have an attractive listing, which has a good chance of selling quickly, and your marketing efforts are paying off, which should please the seller.

However, there is plenty of room for problems if you don’t handle the intense demand for your listing with diligence and fairness to all – your seller-client and the prospective purchasers.

Verbal Offers Are Not Competing Offers

All offers must be presented in writing. If a seller’s agent is presented with a verbal offer, the seller must be told what was offered and the buyer’s agent must be instructed to put the offer in writing in order to be considered.

Disclosure to the Buyer

In Nova Scotia, the decision to disclose the existence of competing offers to buyers is entirely up to the seller.

Should the seller receive competing offers, the seller’s agent should:

• inform the seller immediately;
• recommend the seller review each offer prior to making a decision;
• disclose the presence of competing offers to the buyers’ agents if the seller agreed to do so, however the content of the offers must remain confidential;
• attempt to have all offers presented to the seller in the same time frame. The seller can delay the presentation by providing written consent; and
• advise the seller of their options, such as:
• accept one offer, reject all others;
• counter one offer and set others aside pending the result;
• reject all offers;
• accept more than one offer with any offers after the first as back-up offers. Any back-up offers must remove the seller’s obligation from the first contract when moving on to the next through a condition included in the counter offer, such as “seller’s acceptance of this back-up offer is subject to the seller ceasing to be obligated in any way by [date] under the previously accepted purchase contract. This condition is for the sole benefit of the seller.”

Representing Buyers

The buyer’s agent has a duty to disclose competing offers and any terms that are known to them, but ultimately buyers might not be made aware of competing offer situations; that decision rests with the seller. If the seller does disclose that the buyer is in a competing offer situation, the buyer’s agent should:

• immediately inform the buyer;
• advise the buyer of the seller’s options;
• ask to personally attend the offer presentations; and
• advise the buyer of their options, such as:
• increase the offer prior to presentation;
• leave the offer as it is;
• withdraw the offer; or
• reconsider the fixtures, chattels, terms and conditions of the offer prior to presentation and have these changes reflected in writing.

Tips for Buyers

Once the buyer is made aware that they are in a competing offer situation, they may want to increase the offer price and/or reconsider a term or condition in effort to compel the seller. Financing and inspections are both examples of conditions that buyers could remove in effort to improve their offer. Doing so however, increases the level of risk for the buyer.

Price:

What can the buyer realistically offer on the property? Is the property appropriately valued? Buyers should understand the long-term risks of increasing their offer price and what impact it could have on their financials. Further, buyers should understand that increasing their purchase price above the asking price does not guarantee that their offer will be successful.

Property Inspection:

Buyers may be tempted to remove the inspection condition in an effort to present a more appealing offer to the seller, but there could be major risks involved in doing so. Property defects and major repairs are an expensive reality in many older buildings and foregoing the inspection will prevent the buyer from having a clear understanding of the current state of the property. Buyers are recommended to use extreme caution when deciding to remove an inspection clause for this purpose.

Financing Pre-approval:

If you don’t know exactly what you can afford, you may be looking out of your price range and wasting your time. You may also be looking below what you would have qualified for and not getting the right investment property for you.

If you start off by getting a pre-approval on the other hand, you can sort by price, identify the right neighbourhoods, and find your desired property much faster.

Offer & Acceptance:

There is no contract until all parties agree to its written terms, sign their names to express that agreement and communicate acceptance to the offering party. Until then, you have nothing more than a stack of offers – not a stack of contracts – any one of which could appeal to your seller-client. Do not advise a buyer or a buyer’s agent that the seller has accepted the buyer’s offer until the seller has signed the offer. A seller who orally expressed a willingness to accept an offer has not yet accepted the offer and has no legal obligation to do so. Thus, no contract has been formed.

The Back-up Offer:

When one offer is accepted, your client may be willing to negotiate another as a “back-up”. Of course, this would require agreement by the second buyer and would require special language indicating that the back-up contract has no legal standing unless and until the primary contract is terminated.

Only One Winner:

Unfortunately, in the case of multiple offers for one property, there will be those that lose. Someone will walk away disappointed for not having been able to buy their ideal property, but if everything is handled in an equitable manner, the seller should NOT be the losing party, but should walk away with a deal that is in their best interest.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the commercial real estate industry.  Central Business Districts throughout Atlantic Canada (and beyond) have experienced the greatest impact as the market shifts away from traditional brick-and-mortar office space.  Many large employers anchoring multi-story office buildings have transitioned to a remote workforce to satisfy public health guidelines, while also providing their staff with more flexible working arrangements.  Vibrant, bustling downtowns are now a shell of what they once were – your morning pitstop is now closing its doors and is shadowed by dark buildings and empty parking garages, while office towers are being considered for possible sale, renovation, or conversion to multi-residential purposes. 

With a reduction in office occupancy, downtown districts have experienced a significant decrease in traffic.  During December 2020 our in-house regional market survey found that the majority of urban centers throughout the Maritime provinces have experienced increasing vacancy rates.  Halifax was the only market to see a slight decrease in the rate (of 1.39 percentage points). Downtown St. John’s on the other hand recorded the largest vacancy rate at a whopping 37.46%, substantially higher than that of the greater St. John’s area as a whole, and up 10.93 percentage points (PP) from the prior year. Moncton office vacancy rates increased 8.56(PP) from the prior year while Saint John and Fredericton followed with growth rates of 4.07(PP) and 3.83(PP) respectively.   

On a macro level, Statistics Canada report that the number of firms with 10% or more of their workforce working remotely doubled between February and May 2020. This trend may not be over any time soon, as one in five companies reportedly expect 10% or more of their staff to continue working from home post-pandemic. Canada did experience a decrease in remote working after the first wave of COVID-19, however since October 2020 remote working has increased and in December was sitting at 28.6% according to Statistics Canada.

Although the pandemic has brought a lot of doom and gloom, it has also created new opportunities and broadened perspectives. Our Lasercad^® team have had the pleasure of helping our clients pivot and re-focus; assisting them in mapping out socially distanced office layouts in order to “future-proof” spaces, while also promoting continued in-person workflow amongst staff. We have provided landlords and building owners with accurate measurements and floor layouts to aid in managing and renovating their properties.

The long-term effects of the pandemic on local commercial real estate remain to be seen, however preparing yourself and your property for various outcomes is a great start. Having an electronic CAD inventory of your space allows the flexibility to run a variety of scenarios and can be a helpful tool while working with tenants, contractors and buyers. If you would like to hear more about our recent projects please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our Lasercad^® team would be happy to discuss your concerns and requirements as you try to navigate these uncertain times. 

Mark Smith is a consultant in our Valuation Division and is heavily involved in many of our Lasercad® projects. For more information about our range of Lasercad® services, feel free to contact Mark at (902) 429-1811 or msmith2@turnerdrake.com.

Expropriation is the forceable taking of property by an acquiring authority for a public project, such as a road, transmission line, pipeline etc. In the vast majority of cases, only a small portion of a property is taken, and sometimes only a partial interest is required.  Pipelines, for example, only require a sub-surface easement interest, allowing the owner to continue using the surface for anything that doesn’t interfere with the operation and maintenance of the pipeline itself.  Transmission lines are happy to share, requiring only an easement interest for the towers and the overhead lines.  Regardless of whether the interest is full (fee simple) or partial (easement), the acquiring authority pays compensation for the value of the interest taken, the boundaries of which are defined by a survey plan and a legal description, properly recorded at the Land Registry.

In some instances, however, an acquiring authority may exert control beyond the boundaries of what it has legally acquired.  In Nova Scotia, new highways are usually designated as controlled access highways under the Public Highways Act, imposing potential new restrictions on building setbacks.  A permit from the Minister is required for the construction of buildings and structures within 60 metres (197 ft.) of the limit of a designated controlled access highway or within 100 metres (328 ft.) of its centre line.  That is probably far more restrictive than the local By-Laws require, potentially sterilizing a fair chunk of land alongside the new highway unless Ministerial approval is granted.  In rural areas it probably doesn’t matter, but in urban areas it might, especially if there is a potential for development.  The Public Highways Act does allow compensation for so-called injurious affection resulting from a controlled access highway designation … but not for new highways.  So, any compensation in respect of new setbacks alongside new highways must presumably be claimed via the Expropriation Act, even though the restrictions are authorised under a different act.

Pipeline easements come with similar strings attached.  Oil and gas pipelines are regulated under the National Energy Board Act (which strictly speaking grants orders for rights of entry rather than expropriations).  The Act imposes an automatic 30 metre (98 ft.) Prescribed Area – or safety zone – on either side of the pipeline, within which so-called ground disturbances and construction activities are restricted. Some activities are totally prohibited and others require the pipeline company’s permission.  So, whilst the pipeline company only acquires the easement within which its pipeline sits, it casts a 30 metre shadow on either side.  Compensation for restrictions within the 30 metre safety zone is often challenged but has been awarded and upheld by the Federal Court in valid circumstances.  Again, in rural areas it might have little impact, but in urban areas it most likely will, especially if it interferes with development plans.

Well, last year certainly was one for the history books. Of all the issues amplified by the pandemic in 2020, housing and its affordability has been among the most universal, and the most important. Tight vacancy and escalating rents, construction cost and process challenges, plummeting interest rates and a dearth of listings, CERB and eviction bans, renovictions and rent control, escalating homelessness and guerilla shelters. The jury is still far out on 2021, of course, but the challenges and conversations around housing show no signs of a speedy resolution.

I’ve been trying and failing for some time to write about housing; what’s been happening in our region, and how those trends have been affected by the ongoing pandemic. Part of my challenge has been simply keeping up to date – these days you can’t go more than a week or so without getting hit with some new and relevant information. Another part of my challenge has been the complexity of the issue. Housing is the bottom line that many personal, economic, and policy issues fall down to; it is difficult to understand one major facet of the issue without an appreciation for the others.

Originally my goal for this piece was to do a punchy listicle with a couple interesting data points. In my naivete, I established a working title of “3 Charts to Explain Housing”. However, I’ve found it impossible to weave together anything worth saying using so few threads. So, with apologies to our ever-patient marketing staff and any of you who were wishing for a light read, I give you: Seven Facets of Our Housing Situation Explained (with eight charts).  

POPULATION GROWTH

While the COVID-exodus to Atlantic Canada from elsewhere in the country has received much media attention over the past few months, it is really a sideshow. Despite the interesting anecdotes about sight-unseen sales in (formerly) sleepy markets, or Realtors® conducting showings via Zoom, overall interprovincial migration is not significantly different in 2020. We have longer term and more fundamental growth drivers affecting our region. Many of these have been a significant source of housing demand over recent years, but in some cases, have waned under pandemic conditions:

Oil Patch Kaput

During the tar sands heyday from late 2004 to late 2015 out-migration from Nova Scotia to Alberta averaged about 1,250 people every quarter. That’s one Antigonish per year. For eleven years straight. These days, with oil trading at half its price, the exodus has collapsed by a similar proportion while in-migration from Alberta has remained comparatively steady. The result: in the 62 quarters from Q1 2000 to Q2 2015, net migration from Alberta to Nova Scotia was positive only 3 times. In the 21 quarters since (no data yet for Q4 2020), it’s only been negative once. A penny saved is a penny earned.

Real Estate Refugees

Yes, there is certainly a notable inflow of population and home-buying capital from other Canadian regions that have experienced stronger price appreciation, and worse pandemic performance. The work-from-home narrative dominates the conversation on this, but it is not the whole story. This is a combined house price arbitrage play with the beginnings of a structural trend, principally from Ontario and British Columbia, driven by population aging as households execute longer-standing plans to retire Down East. It has been going on for several years, with 2017 being a breakout after Toronto and Vancouver posted eyewatering year-over-year house price increases. The after-spring bump in 2020 from ON and BC is only about 10% higher than the same period last year.

Increasing Immigration

The immigration story was really kicked off in 2016 with the much-publicized landings of Syrian Refugees however other streams for entry really took things from there. Nova Scotia went from welcoming about 610 international immigrants per year (2005-2015 average), to more than 1,390 per year since. Numbers have waned in 2020, obviously, but the Federal Government was early to state that immigration, and increased immigration at that, is a core element of its post-pandemic economic recovery plans. We therefore expect this trend to pick right back up as vaccination is rolled out globally.

Student Bodies

Efforts to recruit international students (and their sizable tuition fees) have been front and centre for post-secondary institutions for some time. However, the Trump presidency apparently supercharged things as a significant number of prospective students have diverted to other western countries who didn’t follow the same nationalistic and isolationist path. This is such an interesting twist of fate that it deserved its own chart:

(Note: Household growth is derived by applying occupancy rates to population growth estimates from Statscan. Occupancy rates are interpolated/extrapolated from census figures, and are approximately 2.3 people/household for recent years. This approach likely underestimates the number of households added as the demographics of new arrivers lean towards smaller households than the general population.)