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Friday Free-for-all!

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Ho-ho-ho. It’s that time of the week again, lets do our end of the week news round up and see who’s been naughty and nice. Here are a few links to kick off the Holiday chatter:

–TD forecasting housing ‘correction’
–Microloft probably too small for Santa
–Everybody wants out of Trump Towers
–Victoria safe from bubble as prices drop
–Canadas housing boom in lucky 13th year
–Consumer confidence needs to do some last minute shopping
–BC economy not too hot, not too cold
–Real Estate speculators in ‘China’s Hawaii’ get coal in stocking

So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent Christmas weekend!

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Mansur al-Hallaj
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The IMF's economic outlook for Canada has an extensive discussion of prospects for the Canadian housing market. IMF staff noted that "the [house] price-to-rent and [house] price-to-income ratios are 29 percent and 20 percent above their averages for the last decade, respectively".

http://www.prakashloungani.com/2011/12/house-pric…

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymous
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IMF calls for review of CMHC risk management

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business…

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7 years 6 months ago
Alum
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Good news for housing:

New-home sales take a jump in November

USA TODAY – 1 hour ago

By Derek Kravitz, AP WASHINGTON – New home sales rose in November from October, but 2011 will likely end up as the worst year for sales in history.

http://usat.ly/vAaMBM

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7 years 6 months ago
Annonymous
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Yeah…It's great when the IMF starts meddling in your Country.
http://www.unitypublishing.com/Government/IMF.htm

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7 years 6 months ago
patriotz
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@Annonymous:

The Debt Man Walking (aka Flaherty) hasn't been shy about lecturing the Europeans to clean up their house, so I guess what goes round comes round.

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7 years 6 months ago
registered
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@4 Annonymous Says:"Yeah…It’s great when the IMF starts meddling in your Country."

Great, great reference material available from the main page of that site.

– The Ark of Apocalypse:Complete book of the future from now to the end of the world Based on bible and private revelations.

– How Stupid Are Some Apparitions

– Enrollment In The Brown Scapular.

RE proponents leverage only top notch scientific sources. And thanks for the tip on my brown scapular.

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7 years 6 months ago
victoria
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I am so glad Victoria is safe. My house has dropped by 10 per cent (the bank valued it – 5 percent last year and 5 this year). But I guess it is only my house.

I best Victoria is safe from Nuclear Fall out too!

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7 years 6 months ago
jesse
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@patriotz: "[Flaherty] hasn’t been shy about lecturing the Europeans to clean up their house, so I guess what goes round comes round"

Remember when the Germans were finger-wagging at the Americans and Brits in 2008? That was awesome.

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7 years 6 months ago
rp1
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Don't worry, Canada will be different:

http://canadianbs.blogspot.com/2011/12/canada-wil…

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7 years 6 months ago
registered
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@8 jesse: Germany integrated a Soviet Bloc country before finding themselves on the hook for the fiscal mismanagement of partner nations. Where do you see any comparison to our self-inflicted, housing-generated, politicly-motivated situation?

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7 years 6 months ago
jesse
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@fixie guy: "Where do you see any comparison to our self-inflicted, housing-generated, politicly-motivated situation?"

That a country now facing recession due to economic imbalances had hubris 3 years ago.

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7 years 6 months ago
Alum
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@Alum:

Please vote up – vote up

this post is falling into foreclosure

Alum Says:

December 23rd, 2011 at 8:21 am

Good news for housing:

New-home sales take a jump in November

USA TODAY – 1 hour ago

By Derek Kravitz, AP WASHINGTON – New home sales rose in November from October, but 2011 will likely end up as the worst year for sales in history.

http://usat.ly/vAaMBM
Current score: -8 +1Thumbs down!

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymous
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@Annonymous: "…IMF meddling with our country"

Yeah…I'm sure Greece hates that the IMF is currently meddling with it's country.

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7 years 6 months ago
patriotz
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@Alum:

"Good news for housing"

US housing prices that on average are less than 1/2 those of Canada certainly are good news!

For American buyers.

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7 years 6 months ago
domus
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@Annonymous: "Yeah…It’s great when the IMF starts meddling in your Country."

Do you realize that we are all on the hook for those tax liabilities? Tax payers at large are responsible for the huge potential losses of the CMHC: notice that these liabilities are 'off-the-books' of the government, as the CMHC is technically an independent institution. That's why the IMF is worried: this type of accounting tricks happened elsewhere.

Apart from realtors and those who get huge discounts on their mortgage, everybody else should be against such insurance. It's a form of government intervention in the market that eventually leads to inflated RE prices, over-leveraging and instability.

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7 years 6 months ago
Bally
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@domus:

Totally agree. I've got no problem with mortgage insurance per se. If an insurance company does a proper job of assessing the default risk then it is no different to other types of coverage. But when governments use their financial clout to back shaky institutions for poltical and social engineering purposes I find it objectionable (especially when us tax payers are on the hook for their incompetence!). Moral hazard anyone?

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7 years 6 months ago
patriotz
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@Bally:

"If an insurance company does a proper job of assessing the default risk then it is no different to other types of coverage."

It is impossible to properly assess mortgage default risk because it's a systemic economic risk rather than an uncorrelated random risk like people dying or car accidents. You can't equate the two in any way.

It's easy to estimate how many people will die or have car accidents in the next year. But no financial institution had a clue 5 years ago how many mortgages would default going forward.

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7 years 6 months ago
Annonymous
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Chill out…Canada's Real Estate will be flat going forward..we've all read the concerns.It's why Carney and others have been putting out the "warnings". No Crash in sight.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/12/23/mo…

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymouse
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@patriotz:

What about earthquakes and other non-predictable events?

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7 years 6 months ago
patriotz
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@DEFAULT NAMEe:

All insured events are unpredictable. That's the point of having insurance.

Insurance works because the more unpredictable events you group together the more predictable the total loss becomes. That works for earthquakes too, you just have to group them together on a very large scale. Once earthquake in, say, Japan does not correlate with an earthquake in Turkey.

But negative economic events are correlated globally.

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymouse
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@patriotz:

"All insured events are unpredictable. That’s the point of having insurance."

You know what I meant. You can have a rough idea how many people will die next year, but you don't know how many major earthquakes there will be in a given country.

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7 years 6 months ago
jesse
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@DEFAULT NAMEe: "you don’t know how many major earthquakes there will be in a given country." But an entire country is unlikely to be wiped out by an earthquake. With these events the government usually sweeps in and is a known cost. See Japan or the US for examples. Mortgage insurance, on the other hand, is exposed to country-wide, not regional, risks. This is tragically avoidable if debt loads are kept in check. I don't have the #s in front of me but the Japanese tsunami — a rare but extremely severe event — impacted GDP growth for a few quarters but has mostly been recovered. Costs will be approaching the hundreds of billions of dollars in an economy much larger than Canada's. The mortgage exposure in Canada is at least that with the added problem that housing sector deleveraging… Read more »
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7 years 6 months ago
patriotz
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@jesse:

The other thing to keep in mind is that the economic slowdown from an earthquake doesn't result in more earthquakes, but the economic slowdown from a fall in house prices and associated defaults results in still lower prices and still more defaults. That is, there is not only correlation between mortgage defaults but causality.

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymous
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slow day and nothing to do in ottawa? even people hated this city so much, left this city across the country, keeps talking about its RE. funny how that is!

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7 years 6 months ago
Anonymous
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still cant find work in ottawa yet?

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7 years 6 months ago