Canada

Flat since 2022... It's barely 2024 and central banks had to increase interest rates by 4% due to inflation in that period. They're now talking about dropping that interest rate and the real estate market is already salivating.

Your argument about buying at the peak and losing your job is not useful, of course it has some limited risk, but you're talking about a few thousand people losing their down payment due to vs a few million making absolute bucket loads of money. You could get hit by a car tomorrow too, doesn't mean you should make financial decisions based on that small potential that something bad will happen to you.

"If prices stagnate" - That's a big If, historically speaking.

I'm 100% betting housing prices continue to rise, the government has no interest in actually decreasing the cost of housing from a political perspective. The majority of Canadian families own their own home, especially older Canadians who vote more frequently than younger people. They may try to keep it from going up so fast, but any growth is still going to make purchasing a better decision. It will not become politically viable to crash the housing market until home ownership rates drop 10-20% off current values, and that's going to take decades.

I literally bet my house on this, We bought a home that's significantly bigger than I need right now because I expect my three school aged children will not be able to move out in 10 years and will need to live at home with us for a significant amount of time. There's even enough space on the property to build a secondary dwelling unit (and zoning allows this) for one of them to have their own home.