As someone currently with no equity in the housing market, next year should be a fun ride of research, driving around neighbourhoods and data crunching. So I'm biasedly hoping for a >5% decline (sorry guys).
As someone in O&G, I'm bearish. Yes, things will be ok, but we're not seeing $100 oil for a while in my opinion. I belive medium term prices will stabilize around $75 which is the supply cost for the 90-95 millionth barrel (global demand). The only thing getting us to $100 is a war or a major disruption.
The biggest losers in this price war are not the shale guys...they can ramp drilling up and down relatively quickly to respond to price. It is the major projects. The events of the last few months bring volatility and risk to their future cash flows, so any capital is going to command a higher risk premium to invest. Translation - higher breakeven oil prices...oil prices that as I said above I don't think we'll see for a while. Its the deep offshore, and most important for us, greenfield oil sands projects that will get hurt.
Thankfully there are lots of aspects to the O&G industry in this city not related to the large projects, but it is sizeable enough that I fear for the well being of the overall O&G labor pool in this province over the next few years.
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