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In the market for a home? You may ask yourself whether buying one in the middle of a trade war is a good idea.

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The answer isn’t easy in a big and diverse country, with many different regional housing markets, and it only gets more complicated when you consider your own financial situation and how it might be affected by the escalating trade war between Canada and the United States.

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One of the main issues for most people when buying a house is job security. People don’t buy homes unless they feel secure in their jobs. They can adjust expectations up and down depending on home prices and financing costs, but purchasing slows during a recession for good reason: You can’t pay the mortgage for very long without a job.

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Another searing question for any prospective buyer is whether we have hit the bottom in home prices, something that is almost impossible to see until the market starts rising.

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And another key issue that may be affected by an economy in the middle of a trade war is where interest rates may go for mortgage holders.

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In terms of home prices, in Canada’s largest market, Shalabh Garg, an investment analyst covering financial services and REITs for Veritas Investment Research Corp., believes the Greater Toronto Area may be nearing bottom.

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While he doesn’t see a massive rebound in housing prices in the Toronto market, Garg said prices just don’t have much room to drop anymore.

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“When I think of the average GTA home, this is pretty much the bottom; it is not going to go down another 10 or 20 per cent,” he said. However, he added that major job losses might change his opinion.

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Dropping prices may give homeowners a reason not to sell. As does their other sources of wealth.

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“The trade war is getting more intense, but when you think about who owns the houses, it’s the majority of people who have most of their wealth outside real estate,” said Garg. These are the people who could likely better afford a downturn in the paper wealth of their home, he said.

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He added that while homeowners’ housing wealth may have gone down, their financial assets, such as stocks, continue to climb. Indeed, the S&P/TSX 300 Composite index is up about 25 per cent over the past year.

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Ultimately, many Canadian homeowners are looking at their retirement holdings and aren’t really worried about their house losing value, especially if they aren’t selling anytime soon, he said. “It doesn’t necessarily really force people to sell,” said Garg.

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Of course it’s another story for people without many financial assets who have seen their wages lag inflation and their purchasing power declining. “That’s where the stress is today,” said Garg.

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The average selling price of a home in the GTA was $993,410 in August, down 2.7 percent from a year ago, according to the latest stats from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. And TRREB president Daniel Steinfeld warned that, “if inventory tightens and home prices begin to rise, some buyers may face a trade-off between waiting for greater economic certainty and purchasing before prices move higher.”