October 2024 in Review: TD's Billion Dollar Fine, Quebec's Study Permit Bill, and Canada's Investor Plans

As of October 2024, three stories stood out for anyone watching Canadian housing: TD Bank was ordered to pay more than $3 billion in United States penalties over money laundering, Quebec moved to slow international study permits, and a Royal LePage survey found that one in four Canadians plans to buy an investment property within four years, through 2028.

I am Moe Asgarian, a Broker in Toronto with RE/MAX, ranked 47th worldwide and in the top 1% in Canada. None of these three is a Toronto listing story, and all three touch the market I work in every day.

TD Bank's October 2024 penalty and what the bank admitted

In October 2024, United States federal authorities ordered TD Bank to pay more than $3 billion in total for money laundering and for breaking a law called the Bank Secrecy Act. Along with the money came restrictions on its activity in the United States that may stop the bank from growing its business there the way it has before. The point regulators pressed hardest on in October 2024 was supervision: TD did not monitor its transactions to the standard expected, and that opened the door to financial problems and wide abuse. The ruling came from the United States attorney general, who said TD created the conditions for financial crime to grow.

The part that stands out to me is the admission. TD itself pleaded to both counts, money laundering and violating the secrecy program, and as of October 2024 it was the largest bank in the United States to admit that program violation and the first bank in American history to admit money laundering. We do not know every detail. United States prosecutors said in October 2024 that TD let three money laundering networks move more than $670 million through accounts at the bank over a six-year period, that many TD employees were aware and took no action, and that one of those networks handled money from drug trafficking, with five TD employees laundering it. One employee identified as David moved $470 million in illegal funds through different TD branches, with a large amount paid in bribes so the money could travel. A separate thread was very large cash withdrawals, far above the permitted limit, with special permission given to certain people to take that much out. Internal monitors at the bank and outside observers had both warned about money laundering repeatedly over the previous ten years. TD's senior management said they take full responsibility and will change how they work, and the chief executive apologized to shareholders.

Why Canadian mortgage borrowers should care

This happened at TD's branches in the United States, not in Canada. Through late October 2024 the question raised in Canadian media was whether TD had also failed to act against money laundering here at home, and plenty of experts weighed in on it. For a reader in Toronto the practical angle is simpler. TD is one of the largest financial institutions in Canada and one of the big mortgage lenders, so a penalty of more than $3 billion plus new limits in its biggest foreign market is worth watching for any direct or indirect effect on lending here. This was not a story you could walk past in October 2024, and I am still following it.

Quebec moves to slow international study permits

In October 2024, Quebec said it wants to slow the growth of study permits issued to international students and put a bill before the provincial legislature to take more control over them. The reason the province gave was the explosion in its temporary population: as of that announcement, 24% of the people living in Quebec on a temporary basis were international students, a share the province's policymakers called very high, and the international student population in Quebec had grown by around 140%. The approach resembles how the United States controls international student numbers. Quebec also wants to make switching programs or institutions harder. Today a student gets accepted through a second or third tier institution, fills out a few forms and changes college or university, which in practice breaks the enrolment plan the province had set. The plan is to route those transfers through provincial permits so that changing school is no longer easy.

Why study permit rules land on the rental market

The obvious question in October 2024 was whether this stays a Quebec decision or spreads to other provinces and Ottawa. There is a precedent worth remembering: a few months before October 2024, Quebec passed a law restricting work permit policy, and within days similar decisions were applied, with changes, across the rest of Canada. So I would watch the other provinces and the federal government here. For housing, the link runs through rent, and that is my read rather than something the bill says. Limits on temporary residency mean fewer renters, and if a group of students decide not to apply to institutions in Quebec because they know transfers are closed off, that shows up in rental demand before it shows up anywhere else.

One in four Canadians plans to buy an investment property

The last October 2024 item is a Royal LePage survey, and it was the one that surprised me. It found that over the next four years, through 2028, one in four Canadians, 25%, intends to buy a property as an investment. Note that this is on top of buying a home to live in. Canadians who did not own a residential investment property at the time said they would likely buy one within the next few years, and more than half of those who already owned one said adding another was in their plan. The survey read property in Canada as a safe and dependable way to build capital, bought so that people have something in later years and so the next generation has an opening.

Two more numbers from that October 2024 survey are worth holding onto. About 11% of Canadians, roughly 4.4 million people, owned an investment property at the time. And roughly one third of Canadian investors, 31%, were thinking about selling their properties because interest rates had risen. Rates were unusually high in October 2024, which thins the profit in this market, and maintenance and the other carrying costs of owning a home had gone up too, so investor appetite had cooled. One more detail from the same survey: among Canadian residential investors, a notable share do not own the home they live in, meaning they rent or live with friends and family, and most of them are between 18 and 34 years old.

What I tell investors in the Toronto area

Put the three together and the October 2024 picture is a market where ordinary Canadians still trust property as a long term tool, where the money moving through the banks is being watched more closely, and where rental demand depends on immigration decisions being made province by province. My own advice does not change with the news cycle. Hold long enough that one year's interest rate does not decide the outcome, run the carrying costs honestly before you sign, and if your plan leans on rent from students or newcomers, know exactly which policy that assumption depends on. At Team Asgarian, advising on and buying investment property is one of the services my colleagues and I offer. Fill out the form at the bottom of this page or book a free consultation and we can talk through specific opportunities. Stay well and take care.