While some Canadian cities offer reasonable affordability compared to household incomes, Vancouver’s housing is, by any measure, highly overvalued and vulnerable to a sharp correction. Prices have risen 55% from their 2009 trough to a level 29% above their prior peak. The average home price reached nearly C$800,000 (according to CMHC).
60 Comments
@Sheesh:
"To clarify, I think they will try to put restrictions on dual citizens who do not reside in Canada."
You mean like Wayne Gretzky?
NHLers aside, the Charter of Rights says that citizens have the right to enter or leave Canada at will. I don't think any attempt to limit citizens living abroad would be constitutional.
Yeah you can believe whatever you want, but the truth is that there is still quite a big housing bubble. Vancouver is still listed as one of the most dangerous places to invest in real estate and I don´t see any chance of returning to the normal state without significant burst. Toronto is maybe doing a bit better, but to call it balloon instead of bubble isn´t really smart. Calgary and Alberta Real Estate Market are just slowing down after quite an increase in the last quarter of 2011, but their housing market is far from bubble. The prices are quite stable and the increases in home sales were steady last year. The debt level of Canadian households is one of the biggest and there are growing numbers of retiring people. This does´t make a good prospect for upcoming years,… Read more »
@patriotz Do you mean recognizing dual citizenship or allowing dual citizenship? To clarify, I think they will try to put restrictions on dual citizens who do not reside in Canada. For example, your citizenship may expire if you live out of the country for a number of years, or there may be increased tax implications. I am interested in this as I am a dual citizen with the US and I was living there during the Lebanon evacuation so I remember the news stories on these issues at the time. There were grumbles cheapening the value of citizenship, etc. As it was at the time, all I had to do was file a statement of non-residency to avoid tax implications while living in the US. When I returned, I simply had to inform them I was back and now I… Read more »
looking back: USA's classic "There is no bubble" talk – April 2007 When the Census Bureau reported a statistically insignificant decline of 3.9% in new home sales for February, the stock market dropped, ignoring significant increases in both new home construction and existing home sales. Moreover, the monthly housing numbers are notoriously volatile during the winter, because the housing market is sensitive to the weather in much of the country, and has been since the days of New Amsterdam. But the markets and the press have reversed the old song: they now accentuate the negative, eliminating the positive. This panic started two months ago, when the two largest subprime lenders, HSBC and New Century Financial, announced that they were suffering large losses from unexpectedly high defaults by homeowners. …But subprime loans are a small share of the mortgage market. The… Read more »
Jan-2012
Total days 21
Days elapsed so far 20
Weekends / holidays 10
Days missing 0
Days remaining 1
7 Day Moving Average: Sales 98
7 Day Moving Average: Listings 246
SALES
Sales so far 1481
Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 98
Projected month end total 1579 +/- 22
NEW LISTINGS
Listings so far 5484
Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 246
Projected month end total 5730 +/- 59
Sell-list so far 27.0%
Projected month-end sell-list 27.6%
MONTHS OF INVENTORY
Inventory as of Jan 30, 2012 13380
MoI at this sales pace 8.47
At 123 sales, today saw the highest daily sales volume of the month. Here is last February in terms of daily sales and listings. If February shows similar trends to January — with listings up 20% YOY — we are in for some big days. But the market has disappointed before so don't get too excited; it just sets you up for failure. "Trust me on this." sales listings sell/newlist 210 350 60% 147 267 55% 104 267 39% 104 246 42% 93 283 33% 182 227 80% 204 326 63% 81 262 31% 121 281 43% 198 322 61% 153 311 49% 219 287 76% 166 280 59% 116 270 43% 178 297 60% 209 290 72% 172 255 67% 137 280 49% 142 242 59% 204 305 67% February 2011 month end data Average Sales 157 Total Sales… Read more »
She sounds like she is 100 yr old… but obviously invested a lot of her money into cosmic surgery
A comment on Larry's blog:
"Sometimes when you want to believe something, you have a different outlook. I work with mortgages and for a several months it’s been very slow. Ive notice the slowdown since summer and didn’t believe we could see prices come down. I feel different now. This decade have paid us well in the real estate business, But it’s time to face the fact that this could end one day. It looks like this boom is over for now."
Great news: we are now in a balloon. They are harder to pop than bubbles, but they make a lot more noise!
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Canada+ho…
What an idiot! And Garth says she is trying to sell her 3 million $ house. What an unbiased "study"…
@VMD: Hmm something not working here…
My recent credit report (end of 2011) had my mortgage listed by both Equifax and Transunion. The mortgage is now discharged, don't know if that makes a difference.
@VMD:
re: mortgage debt will be listed on credit reports
was following the conversations on the chinese forum. Most of the users (including house-pumpers) are seeing this change as quite negative to home price. Previously one can use the same set of credit report to obtain several mortgages. "You used to be able to marry the same girl to several husbands, now you can't, you have to get a divorce first."
Can anyone confirm that credit checks didn't use to include mortgage holdings?
What I found most interesting was the reason for the huge surge in CHMC volumes was the bank’s were taking it out even when there was a high down payment and paying the premiums themselves.
This would of course allow the banks to make loans to anybody with no risk with the taxpayer on the hook.
I am not sure this is what they had in mind when they made the program.
@SunBlaster: …Now with CONservative government in majority, get ready for supersonic speeds in wealth transfer,..
Yes, you're in luck: they will be pushing additional funding for crop circles and tinfoil hats.
@oneangryslav2: That’s CMHC insurance in force as of the end of the calendar year.
Source:
http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MortgageInsurance.pdf
@oneangryslav2: More searching turned this up:
Year Insurance in Force (Billions)
2005 273
2006 291
2007 345
2008 407
2009 472
@oneangryslav2: Well, according to this link, this was the situation as of 31 December 2005.
At 31 December 2005, the value of the insurance policies in force was more than $273 billion
So they've more than doubled the level of issuance in six years.
Does anybody have a link that provides numbers for historical levels (in constant dollars) of mortgages insured by the CHMC? I’d like to chart that by house price to show to an especially obnoxious acquaintance.
@VMD mobile: We'll see what happens. They may not make any more land, but will they make more money?
@Conrad: Yo Conrad. Its different this time.
@Devore:
Wonder what happens when cmhc exceeds its 600B cap…
Also would be interesting to know if cmhc tracks its total exposure live or quarterly…
I just went through the 216 comments on this CBC article and only around 5 out of the 216 had something positive to say regarding real estate (or believed the story), the other 210 comments were either calling for a correction bigger than the article predicts or commenting on the inaccuracy of Sherry Cooper’s predictions over the years…..that’s gotta say something?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/01/30/bmo-housing-real-estate.html
@Conrad:
Ummmm, how the hell is a +170 listing day bullish???
@paulb.:
Ahhhh. Back to business as usual, as I knew it would be. Early January numbers always have low/unpredictable sales and are basically meaningless.
Thanks for the laugh again this year gents. See you next Jan for the same "Oh its crashing……doh" game again. Never gets old.
Lather, rinse, repeat