Many homeowners who bought at the peak of the market in 2022 have seen chunks of their equity wiped out. Photo by Colleen De Neve / Postmedia

One last gasp for the Canadian residential market . That was the headline on the last story I wrote for the Financial Post nearly eight years ago.

I’m back, and clearly the housing market had the profound ability to hold its breath longer than many anticipated. Who envisioned massive spikes in immigration, a pandemic and record-low lending rates would drive home prices to even greater heights?

“The housing market was a little more gaspy,” Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage, one of the country’s largest residential brokerages, joked in an interview.

Soper gave me some credit: “You were right, the market got hammered,” he said, poi

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