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Stories Tagged - Todd Hirsch
Nov. 04, 2021 | Tyler Difley
Alberta economy must embrace change, diversification to recover from pandemic, says ATB Financial chief economist
ATB Financial vice-president and chief economist Todd Hirsch says Alberta’s economy can’t rely on its traditional strengths as it tries to rebuild in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sept. 11, 2019 | Mario Toneguzzi
My First Home: Todd Hirsch, ATB Financial chief economist
When Todd Hirsch went looking for his first home in 1994, he remembers telling his REALTOR® he wanted something that was new or recently updated.
April 04, 2018 | Mario Toneguzzi
First-home stories from Calgary's business community
Dec. 22, 2017 | Marty Hope
What they said in 2017
Dec. 06, 2017 | Barb Livingstone
The Amazon effect
Let's call it the "Amazon effect": the cascading economic stimulation that comes from one of the world's largest corporations taking up residence in your market.
It is an effect already being felt in the Calgary region after the announcement that the e-commerce giant will be opening a 600,000-square-foot distribution centre in Balzac – employing 750 full-time workers, and an additional 450 part-time or seasonally, by the end of 2018.
June 15, 2017 | CREBNow
Alberta sees increase in home renovation spending during first quarter of 2017
According to Statistics Canada, investment in home renovations in the first quarter of 2017 hit a record high of $1.78 billion. A release from ATB Financial's Economics and Research Team says this is close to double the spending a decade ago.
Todd Hirsch, chief economist with ATB Financial, says he was surprised by the data for the first three months of this year.
"The increase that we saw in late 2016 and the first quarter of this year can be attributed to the rebuild in Fort McMurray (from last year's wildfires) because not every house was destroyed, which we tend to focus on." he said. "There were also many, many homes that needed to be renovated."
May 04, 2017 | CREBNow
Lots for lease
The suburban commercial real estate market has mostly avoided the high vacancy rates seen downtown, but levels are creeping upwards in suburban malls
The economic downturn of the past two years has had a widespread impact on Calgary's retail sector with businesses in the core particularly hard hit.
Two years of a recession in 2015 and 2016 have taken their toll as thousands of people in the city's central business district were victims of layoffs in the oil patch, which takes up the vast majority of space in the downtown office market.
With thousands of potential customers gone, retail stores and restaurants have felt the pinch.
Jan. 11, 2017 | Joel Schlesinger
Barriers to recovery
Recent changes by the federal government to mortgage lending rules will likely serve as headwinds for the city's recovering real estate market in the coming year, said CREB® in its 2017 Economic Outlook and Regional Housing Forecast.
Since 2008, the federal government has been tightening mortgage lending rules.
Nov. 19, 2016 | Alex Frazer Harrison
Foreign buyers roundtable
Here's what they had to say:
