StatsCan profiles real estate investors

Investors get a bad rap.

In a new report released today, StatsCan says:

"While investors can provide needed rental stock, they have also been found to exacerbate house price volatility and can limit housing market access for first-time homebuyers."

Investors seldom get the credit they deserve for improving the country's housing stock (including renovating neglected properties), revitalizing neighborhoods (which can lead to community development), adding market liquidity and creating equity (retirement assets) for existing owners.

Instead, they're conveniently scapegoated for a housing supply shortage of the government's own making. If there were enough homes to go around—relative to Ottawa's sky-high immigration admissions—perhaps first-time homebuyers would enjoy better affordability, and prices would be far less volatile.

Of course, investors do temporarily distort market fundamentals at times, but that's only because imbalances between supply and demand allow the fundamentals to be distorted.

But hey, this is all a soapbox speech for a different day.

Here's what our statistical agency concluded about Canadian real estate investors, along with tips for mortgage originators at the end: