For mortgage professionals, the headline of the announcement was undoubtedly the Bank’s revision of its forecasts for the evolution of its key rate. The timing of planned rate hikes has accelerated, with the Bank now forecasting that they will take place in the middle of quarters of next year rather than its previous forecast for the second half of 2022.
Did this news surprise the mortgage community? Not at all, according to RateHub.ca co-founder and CanWise Financial president James Laird (top photo). He told Canadian Mortgage Professional that given the Bank’s recent turmoil in the economy, a change in its schedule for hikes had been considered.
Read more: Will inflation force the Bank of Canada’s hand on interest rates?
” I was not [surprised], given the positive news and the fact that COVID numbers have remained low in Canada, overall, ”he said. “I expected them to move that date forward; I thought it was possible that they could have taken it even further than they did.
That said, the Bank’s new timeline for the benchmark rate to start rising is by no means set in stone, with the unexplored waters of the pandemic making it difficult to predict what lies ahead for the Canadian economy in 2022.
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