Thank you for that.
Although that explanation would seem to make sense on the surface, if you look at the data, it doesn't add up, because even inner-city condo prices went up. You would expect that if people were vacating small properties to go to big ones, you would see prices go up for those bigger properties but prices go down for the inner-city smaller properties. That didn't happen. In fact, inner-city condos actually increased in price at an unusually fast rate.
We can debate all day why prices went up. The fact is they did, and those prices were paid with real money. The amount spent on housing went from $250 billion to $450 billion. The amount of mortgages going to investors increased by 100%, according to a fall Bank of Canada report.
My question was, regardless of why prices are going up, where did the money come from?