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What we’re really going to see is a dramatic increase in the number of renters. A buyer who qualified for a $665,000 property before Monday is now looking at about $505,000. That’s for the same buyer with a $100,000 income and $40,000 down. It’s a massive change, a 24-per-cent reduction. So a lot of people are going to be staying renters.

Q: Since the rule changes are really aimed at cooling overheated markets in Toronto and Vancouver, could the federal government have tackled this on a regional basis instead of rolling out the same new mortgage rules nationwide?

A: That would have been more difficult. And also, there would be so many people up in arms in Toronto, probably mostly Toronto, because that’s the market they now have to focus on. Vancouver was already slowing down four months before the foreign buyers’ tax hit.

Q: The federal government’s expert advisory panel on economic growth has proposed boosting Canada’s immigration level by 50 per cent, to 450,000 a year. How might this affect the housing market?

A: Where are they going to live? Our research shows that when immigrants come into Canada, depending on the visa class, it usually takes three to five years before they can buy. What we’ve done with these new mortgage rules is, we’ve created a dam.

About 52 per cent of all millennials are still living at home in Canada. These rules will put another massive cohort of first-time home buyers behind that dam. If they increase the immigration numbers, you’ll put those people behind that rental dam, too. But the dam can only hold for so long. What we’re going to witness is a massive increase in rental demand.