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Susan Cui

The Daily, Thursday, May 12, 2011. New Housing Price Index - 3 views

www.statcan.gc.ca/...dq110512a-eng.htm

Housing Price Index

shared by Susan Cui on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • The New Housing Price Index (NHPI) was unchanged in March following a 0.4% advance in February.
  • Between February and March, prices rose the most in Saint John, Fredericton and Moncton (+0.4%) followed by the metropolitan regions of Toronto and Oshawa, Winnipeg and Regina (all three registering increases of 0.3%).
  • The most significant monthly price decreases were recorded in Québec (-0.7%), Windsor (-0.6%) and Edmonton (-0.2%).
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Year over year, the NHPI was up 1.9% in March following a 2.1% increase in February.
  • The largest year-over-year increase was observed in St. John's (+6.2%), followed closely by Regina (+6.1%). Compared with March 2010, contractors' selling prices were also higher in Winnipeg (+4.5%) as well as in Toronto and Oshawa (+3.6%). Windsor (-4.6%), London (-1.7%), Greater Sudbury and Thunder Bay (-1.3%) and Victoria (-1.2%) posted 12-month declines in March.
  • Susan Cui on 23 May 11
     
    The New Housing Price Index indicates that during the month of March, there was no change in NHPI. This was because the increase of housing prices in some metropolitan regions were offset by the decrease in housing prices in other metropolitan areas. The areas with the most significant housing price increase were Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, metropolitan regions of Toronto, Oshawa, Winnipeg and Regina. The areas with the most housing price decrease were Quebec, Windsor and Edmonton. Increase in housing prices in some metropolitan areas were due to improving market conditions and higher material, labour, land development costs. Decrease in housing prices in other metropolitan areas were due to slower market conditions and lower land costs. Comparing to last year's NHPI in March, the NHPI went up 1.9%.
naheekim

Housing prices to drop 25%, forecaster predicts - thestar.com - 2 views

www.thestar.com/...to-drop-25-over-next-few-years

Housing Prices Recession

shared by naheekim on 28 May 11 - No Cached
  • House prices in Canada will fall over the next several years by as much as 25 per cent, creating a massive impact on the economy and possibly pushing the country into recession, says a forecast
  • predicting house prices will fall by a cumulative 25 per cent over the next several years
  •  Madani says the effects on consumer spending and housing investment could be significant and perhaps strong enough to “push the economy into another recession
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • “If house prices are to fall, there needs to be a mechanism — an excess of supply relative to demand,”
  • Last year, the Canadian Real Estate Association modified its forecasts at least four times. After initially predicting housing prices would increase in 2011, it now says prices will fall by 1.3 per cent — far below the eye-catching 25 per cent forecast by Capital Economics.
  • Financial agencies such as the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation, which provides mortgage loan insurance, could also be exposed to significant losses
  • The Capital Economics forecast is not the first to predict a bubble in the Canadian market. Gluskin Sheff & Associates chief economist David Rosenberg has also predicted a 25 per cent drop in Canadian housing prices, as has The Economist magazine.
  • As in the U.S., financial innovation and very low interest rates have allowed Canadian consumers to take on more debt, and house prices are high relative to income
  • However, consumers have remained complacent because low rates are keeping mortgage payments low.
  • The historical home price-to-income ratio is 3.5, but now it's hovering around the 5.5 mark, meaning average house prices are more than five times the income of workers
  • naheekim on 28 May 11
     
    The economists and forcasters are predicting that housing prices will decrease over the next several years by 25%.
Susan Cui

Bad housing advice of the day, Philly edition | Felix Salmon - 4 views

blogs.reuters.com/...vice-of-the-day-philly-edition

Housing Price Advice Gold vs House

shared by Susan Cui on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • house prices are falling, gold prices are rising, and therefore before you go ahead and buy a house, you should probably consider whether you’d be better off buying gold instead.
  • house prices are falling, gold prices are rising, and therefore before you go ahead and buy a house, you should probably consider whether you’d be better off buying gold instead.
  • homes are not an investment, they’re more of a consumption good.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Maybe you’ve saved enough for a down payment. But should you bet your money on home prices, even with a tempting low-interest, fixed-rate mortgage? Or is it financially smarter to continue renting and invest the money in an asset that could appreciate for at least another few years?
  • Being “financially smart” is not the same as investing in whichever asset gives you the highest return over some given time horizon.
  • Essentially, Arvedlund is proposing an exotic relative-value trade here: she’s saying that houses will underperform gold, or that the price of a house in gold is going to go down rather than up.
  • the price of a house in gold has gone down, and you would have been financially better off buying gold than taking that money and using it as a down-payment for a house.
Susan Cui

Best Way to Fix Housing Market Let Prices Fall (Fast): Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance - 3 views

finance.yahoo.com/...-Market-Let-Prices-Fall-(Fast)

Housing Price Best way to fix

shared by Susan Cui on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • "Fixing the housing market" is usually defined as:Stopping house prices from falling Stopping foreclosures
  • Prices. The best way to stop prices from falling is to let them fall far enough to reach equilibrium, fast.
  • Foreclosed houses are selling like hotcakes because prices are finally attractive enough to draw in new capital.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Un-foreclosed houses are NOT selling like hotcakes, but this is because their owners have yet faced up to the reality of how little they are worth (or, put differently, because they don't yet have to sell).
  • The vast majority of plans to "stop prices from falling" involve subsidies of one form or another (tax credits, subsidized mortgage rates, etc.)  These may slow the decline, but they won't stop it
  • subsidizing/encouraging debt-bingeing and homeownership is what got us until this mess in this first place.
  • The fastest and most effective way to stop prices from falling is to let them fall until they've reached equilibrium. And then start rebuilding wealth, equity, and economic growth from there.
  • Lots of Americans are going to lose their houses in the next few years regardless of what we do.
  • Keeping the number of foreclosures as small as possible
  • The best way to stop foreclosures, therefore, is to get people out of houses they can't afford and into houses they CAN afford (whether by renting or buying).
  • Importantly,
  • Foreclosures are caused by owners' inability to make debt payments.
  • will just delay the inevitable
  • the house-price issue
  • (No reason to buy or build now if you think prices will be cheaper tomorrow).
  • Businesses and consumers
  • open up their wallets
  • when house prices stop falling. And the fastest way to get there is to let them fall.
Susan Cui

The Progressive Economics Forum » Housing on the knife's edge - 6 views

www.progressive-economics.ca/...ng-on-the-knife%e2%80%99s-edge

Housing Price Unstable Housing Market

shared by Susan Cui on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • On the heels of multiple warnings from the Bank of Canada that Canadians have taken on too much household debt for comfort (we hold the dubious distinction of having the worst consumer debt to financial assets ratio among 20 OECD nations), the federal government announced
  • On the heels of multiple warnings from the Bank of Canada that Canadians have taken on too much household debt for comfort
  • the federal government announced
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • these federal changes will have the greatest effect on middle class Canadians
  • With these moves, the federal government is starting to take seriously the risk of record-high housing prices and record-high household debt.
  • It will reduce the maximum insurable amortization period from 35 years to 30 years
  • The pessimistic possibility is that trying to reign in mortgage debt and housing prices could burst the housing bubble that simultaneously exists in six Canadian cities.
  • The optimistic possibility is that reverting to pre-2006 regulations could help put a lid on house prices
  • to get back to basics and start saving again.
  • It could also force Canadians
  • Between 1980 and 2001, housing prices in four of the six major markets in Canada (Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal) remained in a tight band of between $150,000 and $220,000 (in today’s dollars).
  • experienced three housing price declines between them brought on by interest rate hikes.
  • Toronto and Vancouver
  • When the bubbles burst, they wiped out in the worst case more than 35% of an average house’s value
  • Today it isn’t just Toronto and Vancouver; it’s all six major Canadian cities that are outside of the safety zone.
  • Canada’s housing market is still on a knife’s edge and isn’t clear which way we’ll fall.
Steven Iarusci

Ottawa resale market to cool in 2011; sales to fall 8%: CMHC - Residential - Real Estat... - 0 views

www.obj.ca/...1

demand supply housing mortgage

shared by Steven Iarusci on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • local sales of existing homes listed on the Multiple Listing Service are anticipated to fall to an estimated 13,750 units from 14,923 in 2010, a 7.9-per-cent drop, before picking up again to approximately 14,100 units in 2012.
  • Higher anticipated mortgage rates have resulted in a pull-forward effect on housing demand
  • sales were higher in late 2010 and early 2011 as buyers rushed to avoid rising interest rates and new mortgage rule changes
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • still at historic lows, moderate raises in mortgage rates will impact carrying costs negatively, thus slightly subduing housing demand
  • Average resale prices are expected to rise by a brisk 11.5 per cent to $340,000 this year, but the growth rate will slow significantly in 2012, to 2.9 per cent
  • that segment falling 20.1 per cent to 1,975 units
  • 5,950 total housing starts forecast for 2011, up 2.3 per cent from the previous year
  • single-detached market is anticipated to be the hardest-hit
  • result of an ongoing shift towards more affordable housing types
  • New home construction is also expected to cool down this year
  • first-time homebuyers and downsizing empty-nesters at the forefront of Ottawa's housing market
  • raising the popularity of more affordable housing types such as condominium apartments, townhouses and semi-detached homes
  • soaring gas prices and lengthening commute times will push up interest in homes in the core
  • Elsewhere in the country
  • MLS sales, meanwhile, are expected to be between 429,500 and 480,000 units, with 2012 sales anticipated to be in the range of 410,000 to 511,900 units
  • slowdown affecting both single-detached homes and multi-family housing
  • Steven Iarusci on 02 Jun 11
     
    A few numbers pertaining to supply of housing in the Ottawa market. Talks a little of why demand is changing in the market.
Maria Li

Housing Market: We're Looking at a Double-dip - 0 views

wallstreetpit.com/we-are-looking-at-a-double-dip

Housing Prices

shared by Maria Li on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • housing is now officially in a double-dip recession, with prices in 12 of the 20 markets selling below their 2006 low prices, according to the Case-Shiller 20-city Index.
  • Housing Starts were weaker than expected in April, with an annualized rate of 523,000, which was below the estimate of 563,000, and the result of 585,000 in March. Building Permits were also soft at an annualized rate of 551,000, below the estimate of 590,000, and a revised 574,000 in March
  • The reality is that the continued weakness in housing impacts wealth and consumer spending, and could drive a double-dip in the most extreme circumstance.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • housing market is improving and is better than where it stood a year ago
Heshani Makalande

Housing affordability getting worse, RBC says - Moneyville.ca - 1 views

www.moneyville.ca/...ability-getting-worse-rbc-says

Mortgage debt

shared by Heshani Makalande on 28 May 11 - No Cached
  • Despite two quarters of increasing affordability thanks to lower mortgage rates in the second half of 2010, housing affordability will remain an issue for Canadians in 2011, said a report by RBC Economics released Friday.
  • “We believe we have now entered a period of steady increases in homeownership costs, which will act to restrain growth in homebuyer demand in Canada for the quarters to come,”
  • Declining mortgage rates mean that the second half of 2010 showed improving affordability. The first quarter of 2011 saw mortgage rates remain flat, but house prices started to accelerate upward across Canada
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the key Toronto market, housing affordability measures rose by 0.8 per cent for a 1,200 square foot detached bungalow in the first quarter.
  • It now takes 47.5 per cent of household income to service the cost of mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities.
  • The average price of a bungalow in Toronto was $486,900 and the qualifying income needed to purchase was $103,000. But that is light years away from the Vancouver market, where an average 1,200 square foot bungalow is $736,000 with a qualifying income needed of $136,900.
  • Affordability levels are expected to get worse as interest rates get higher this year, said RBC, warning that Vancouver may be “dangerously disconnected from prevailing local housing demand fundamentals.
  • “The risk of a sustained and widespread drop will be limited given our expectation of a positive economic context that will sustain growth in household income and a gradual pace of interest rate policy normalization,” said Hogue. In Ontario, the market looks to be on a “sustainable path” although it is likely to face headwinds in the coming months arising from interest rate increases and a tightening in mortgage regulations, said RBC.
Maria Li

House prices fall sharply in May - Hometrack | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...ometrack-idUKTRE74S2XA20110529

Housing Prices

shared by Maria Li on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • House prices in England and Wales dropped at their fastest annual pace in over 1-1/2 years in May as demand fell for the first time since January
  • Property research company Hometrack said prices were 3.7 percent lower in May compared with a year ago, the biggest decline since October 2009.
  • Economists expect high inflation, weak wage growth, tax rises and public spending cuts to weigh on consumer spending and house prices this year, despite record low interest rates.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The GfK NOP measure showed its biggest rise in almost 20 years in May, although analysts said it may have received a temporary boost from unusually fine weather, the royal wedding and a run of public holidays.
  • The Hometrack survey showed that the number of new buyers registered with estate agents fell by 0.5 percent in May, the first decline since January.
  • The number of sales agreed rose by 1.6 percent in May, lower than the 8 percent jump seen in April and March's 12.6 percent rise.
  • London continued to buck the national trend, with prices up by 0.2 percent on the month.
  • "With concern over household finances and the wider economic outlook, demand for housing is likely to continue to post further modest declines over the summer,"
Susan Cui

Canadian house prices continue to rise, although April sales down - 6 views

www.montrealgazette.com/...story.html

Housing Price Falling sales Rising Prices

shared by Susan Cui on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • Canadian home prices continued their upward march in April, driven by strong investor demand in Vancouver, while cracks in the Toronto condominium market may be starting to appear.
  • The Canadian Real Estate Association said Tuesday the average price of a home sold in April across the country was $372,544, up eight per cent from a year ago.
  • but the Ottawa-based group cautioned that the figure was skewed due to "surging multimillion dollar property sales in selected areas of Greater Vancouver."
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • slow April sales figures
  • saw activity dip 4.4 per cent from March
  • The slow sales are said to have been driven by new mortgage rules which came into affect April 19 and made it tougher to borrow.
  • Changes to mortgage regulations that took effect in April 2011 likely sidelined a number of first-time homebuyers. By contrast, higher end homes sales in Greater Vancouver and Toronto had their best April ever.
  • more than 50 per cent of condominiums sold in the past year were purchased by buyers who do not intend to occupy their units and plan to rent in many instances.
  • People are buying these for capital appreciation.
  • Don Lawby, chief executive of Century 21 Canada, says the housing market has been affected by foreign investors who have reacted to tougher tax rules in their home country by investing abroad.
  • They are not afraid to offer above price and they are not afraid to get into a bidding war
  • Nevertheless, Lawby says
  • these investors
  • are small and the impact on the larger market minimal.
  • while April numbers present a market with falling sales and rising prices,
  • market conditions were exaggerated by some one-time issues.
Benjamin Gray

Mortgages changes you need to know - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article2003964

leverage

shared by Benjamin Gray on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The world might be able to learn something from Canada about avoiding another housing-related financial meltdown, as the government recently announced several changes to the rules governing government insured residential mortgages. These changes are designed to reduce leverage in the system and promote housing market stability in the country.
  • This is the third time since 2008 that the government has tinkered with the system in an effort to reduce leverage and risk in the Canadian housing market.
  • The Canadian government has instituted several changes related to government-insured mortgages in an effort to promote housing market stability. These changes will reduce leverage in the system and are part of an effort to increase home ownership in Canada.
alex yesikov

Tag, You're It! Too Big to Fail Risk Transferred, Not Eliminated - Daniel Indiviglio - ... - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...239414

Systemic Risk USA Banks Financial Crisis 2008 Too big to fail

shared by alex yesikov on 30 May 11 - No Cached
  • Whenever we think of giant firms that a government feels it must bailout, big banks generally come to mind. Sure, an insurance company sneaked in there too, but AIG might have been more of an exception, since it so grossly underestimated the risks it was taking on its financial products and lived in a grey regulatory area. Although last summer's giant financial regulation bill sought to eliminate the systemic risk that led to a crisis a few years ago, it may have merely transferred some of it, creating a new breed of too big to fail firms
  • Those who understand the crisis know that derivatives were involved, particularly through AIG. It needed to be bailed out, because it did not have enough capital on hand to back up the credit default swaps agreements it had written. A large number of those were tied to the housing market, which caused the crisis.
  • In order to avoid this problem derivatives pose in the future, new financial regulation demands that all derivatives are cleared, when possible. For those who aren't familiar with clearing, the general idea is that each derivative is matched with an equal, opposite derivative through a central bookkeeper -- a clearing house -- to net out the risk they pose (more explanation with a lengthy analogy here).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For example, imagine if AIG had cleared all of its credit default swaps. In theory, that means a clearing house would have ensured that the insurer had ample cash (or other collateral) on hand to satisfy their payouts.
Carolyne Wang

To end poverty, guarantee everyone in Canada $20,000 a year. But are you willing to tru... - 2 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...singlepage

Income Inequality Poverty Guaranteed Annual Income

shared by Carolyne Wang on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The wage gap continues to grow, and one in 10 Canadians still struggles below the low-income line.
  • The idea of giving money to the poor without strings is not new. It melds altruism and libertarianism, saying both that the best way to fight poverty is to put cash in poor people's pockets and that people can make their own choices better than bureaucrats can. As a result, it can find support in theory from both left and right.
  • It has been tested with success in other countries, and now it has re-entered the Canadian political conversation.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • House of Commons committee on poverty released a report proposing a guaranteed basic income for Canadians with disabilities, on the model already available to seniors. The Senate released a similar report this spring calling for a study of how it would work for all low-income Canadians.
  • Within a year, working with counsellors who helped them with their plans and purchases, nine of the 15 participants were moving to some form of housing. The results were not perfect: A couple of people moved back out of housing again, and at least one was imprisoned. But most spent far less than the money available to them, mostly on clothing, food and rent. On the other hand, one person who chose to remain on the street asked for music lessons, and that was all right too.
  • Economists continue to bounce the idea around. Two years ago, Canadian researchers started their own chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network (a group founded in Belgium in 1986) to co-ordinate an ongoing discussion. Some say it might actually accomplish what political rhetoric has been promising for years: the eradication of poverty.
  • In Britain, an experiment was recently conducted with a small group of people who had been living on the streets for more than five years. They were given a budget that they could spend however they wished. The idea was to see whether the “personalized budgets” Britain gives to seniors and people with disabilities to pay for care (which include some conditions) would work for the very poor as well.
  • In Quebec, a government task force went further, recommending a minimum guaranteed income starting at $12,000 for everyone in the province.
  • The idea of a guaranteed annual income has been tested before in Canada – in the mid-1970s, in Dauphin, Man., a farming town with then about 10,000 residents. In the only experiment of its kind in North America, every household in Dauphin was given access to a guaranteed annual budget, subject to their income level. For a family of five, payments equalled about $18,000 a year in today's dollars. Politicians primarily wanted to see if people would stop working. While the project was pre-empted by a change in government, a second look by researchers has found that there was only a slight decline in work – mostly among mothers, who chose to stay home with their children, and teenaged boys, who stayed in school longer.
  • “Very often, services are about getting people off the streets, come what may,” says Joe Batty, who managed the program. “This is about normalizing people.” The program was considered so successful, he says, that the city of London is now providing financial support to expand it.
  • Evelyn Forget, a researcher in medicine at the University of Manitoba, reports that Dauphin also experienced a 10-per-cent drop in hospital admissions and fewer doctor visits, especially for mental-health issues.
  • But a guaranteed-annual-income program would be expensive. In developing nations, a small amount of money can bring about big changes. In a country like Canada, the basic income needed to pull everyone out of poverty would have to be larger, balanced against higher taxes.
  • cost analysis of the Quebec proposal estimated it could run the province as much as $2-billion, including the cost in lost taxes if minimum-wage workers did the math and left those jobs.
  • Other experts argue that poverty reduction needs to be tailored to individual circumstances, especially in cases involving mental health and addiction.
  • Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, one of the more vocal proponents of no-strings-attached aid for the poor, points out that the guaranteed-income program for seniors has greatly reduced poverty, especially among women. “There's a bias that when given the chance people will be lazy,” he says. “That's not my sense of reality.” Mr. Segal argues that giving money with no conditions removes the stigma and shame around poverty, allowing people to focus instead on how to improve their lot.
  • Requiring the poor to prove continually that they are deserving of assistance or threatening to pull help away without notice only discourages the risk-taking and confidence required to get out of poverty.
  • “If you think of the core premise of charity, it is not to treat people as lesser,” Mr. Segal says. “[It] is to give people a leg-up so they can have some measure of independence and can make some of their own choices.”
  • To do that effectively, he argues, we need to let them decide the steps they take to get there. Or – as Ms. Gray in Victoria puts it, saying she would go back to school for more training if she could count on covering rent and daycare – give some autonomy back to “people who are trying to be somebody in this world.”
Linda Lei

A warning for Canadian consumers, household debt could spark 'made in Canada' recession... - 1 views

okotoksmortgages.com/...e-in-canada%E2%80%99-recession

consumer debt housing price

shared by Linda Lei on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • “One scenario is that interest rates rise, house prices drop, and more people begin defaulting on their credit card debt and mortgage obligations. An equally worrying – and perhaps more likely scenario – is that interest rates go up a little, and more of people’s disposable income goes to repaying their debt, leading to a significant reduction in consumer spending. Since personal spending on consumer goods and services accounts for 58 per cent of the Canadian gross domestic product, this decrease would provoke a ‘made in Canada’ recession.”
  • Total household debt in Canada now tops $1.5-trillion, or three times the national debt, MIT said in a statement outlining the paper by Mr. Dunfield and his colleagues in the Action Canada fellowship. That means that while Mr. Flaherty is being fiscally responsible, many of us may not be following suit.
  • “Canada has also avoided the wide regional performance differences seen in the U.S., where states such as Nevada, California and Florida suffered significantly larger declines than the nation overall,” Mr. Goldin added. “In Canada, house prices in Calgary and Vancouver fell further than those across the nation, but the variance was relatively minor by comparison
Linda Lei

House Prices In Canada - 0 views

www.livingin-canada.com/house-prices-canada.html

housing price

shared by Linda Lei on 03 Jun 11 - Cached
  • This particular attraction has faded somewhat recently because the strength of the Canadian dollar means new arrivals have less purchasing power than they had in previous years.
dani tav

Wonkbook: Debt limit vote, part I - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AGKSoMFH_blog.html

Government Spending Budget Cuts debt Housing Price

shared by dani tav on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • a proposal Tuesday that would increase the nation’s ability to borrow money without also making major cuts in federal spending
  • initial request that the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling be lifted without any accompanying spending reductions
  • politically impossible.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • o get my vote on the debt ceiling..Medicare will be a part of it
  • argued against using $80 billion in taxpayer dollars to try to save General Motors Co., Chrysler and many of their suppliers."
  • economists largely predicted the U.S. recovery would ramp back up as short-term disruptions such as higher gas prices, bad weather and supply problems in Japan subsided
  • he ownership rate is now back to the level of 1998, and some housing experts say it could decline to the level of the 1980s or even earlier
  • Cutting tax breaks for retirement won't raise a lot of money;
  • economy
  • medical school free
Linda Lei

Stats Canada discusses household debt | The Economic Analyst - 1 views

www.theeconomicanalyst.com/...anada-discusses-household-debt

consumer debt mortgage

shared by Linda Lei on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Recent research suggests that if interest rates rise by three percentage points, the debt-to-income ratio needs to fall to between 125% and 130% for interest payments on the debt to remain the same
  • Interestingly, note the rise in mortgage debt which started in 2003.  This is the year that the price ceilings were removed by CMHC, meaning that CMHC would insure any mortgage no matter how high.  This, combined with a loosening in down payment requirements, is quite likely the largest driver in house price increase and debt expansion.  Some economists in Calgary recently calculated that the changes in CMHC insurance requirements have been responsible for 40-70 percent of all house price increases since 2004.
Ms Cuttle

Bubble Trouble | From the Print Edition | torontolife.com - 0 views

www.torontolife.com/...bubble-trouble

housing bubble

shared by Ms Cuttle on 18 May 12 - No Cached
  • Demand was also driven by new arrivals. Everyone wanted to live here: almost half of the 250,000 people who immigrate to Canada each year settle in the GTA, and for many, the natural course of events is to plant roots by buying fairly inexpensive condos or suburban starter homes—affordable by international standards.
Heshani Makalande

Home prices climb 8% despite drop in resales - Moneyville.ca - 0 views

www.moneyville.ca/...limb-8-despite-drop-in-resales

Mortgages

shared by Heshani Makalande on 28 May 11 - No Cached
  • OTTAWA—The national average home price rose by eight per cent last month even as housing sales fell by 14.7 per cent from the year before
  • National average home prices rose by eight per cent to $372,544 compared to last April — the third consecutive month in which the national average price rose by eight per cent from year ago levels, the Canadian Real Estate Association said.
  • the number of previously occupied homes sold in April fell to 17,230 from 18,745 a year ago.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The national average home price has been skewed upward in recent months due to a surge in sales of multi-million dollar properties in the Greater Vancouver area.
  • “Changes to mortgage regulations that took effect in April 2011 likely sidelined a number of first-time homebuyers,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist.
  • “By contrast, higher end home sales in Greater Vancouver and Toronto had their best April ever.”
  • The drop in sales of previously occupied homes last month reflected changes to mortgage rules that came in midway through March that reduced the maximum amortization period and pulled forward some sales that would have otherwise occurred later in the year.
  • including Toronto, Vancouver and British Columbia’s Fraser Valley.
  • Government moves to tighten mortgage rules introduced last spring to reign in some buyers gave sales last year a boost, while a second round of changes introduced in March, ate into sales this April, CREA said.
  • “Last April, several transitory factors artificially boosted sales. This included the impending tightening of mortgage rules, speculation about higher interest rates and the looming introduction of the HST in some provinces,” said Klump.
  • sales were down 4.4. per cent from March of this year.
  • The number of newly listed homes edged up 1.3 per cent in April from March, but remained well below levels in January and February, when the coming mortgage rule changes were announced.
Alexei Goudzenko

Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

ipsnews.net/news.asp

food systems reimagining

shared by Alexei Goudzenko on 04 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "We can and must re- imagine other food systems that take numerous social dimensions into account."
  • These are poverty, caused by trade policies that dump heavily- subsidised produce from developed countries on third world markets, thus rendering local farmers jobless; environmental degradation brought on by industrialised farming, which now accounts for nearly one-third of global green house gas emissions; and an epidemic of malnutrition caused by the colonising effects of mono-crops and a flood of processed food from the global north to the global south.
  • Agro-ecology, which includes systems that produce their own fertiliser using materials and waste from the surrounding environment, is being increasingly viewed as the only viable solution to the hunger crisis. Since prices of fertiliser doubled during the 2008 food crisis, continents like Africa that import 95 percent of their chemical fertilisers could see radically different outcomes in production by adopting agro-ecological techniques.
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