Canada, CMHC, debt, economy, hype, mortgage, rates

Manulife scolded by Flaherty, rescinds 5 year rate.

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78 Comments

What is going on in the mortgage world?

Now Flaherty is personally calling up banks and asking them to raise their mortgage rates.

On Tuesday, Manulife Bank dropped its posted interest rate for a five-year fixed-rate mortgage to 2.89 per cent. That’s the lowest posted rate for that time frame the company has ever offered. But in an about-face later in the day, the company pulled the offering and reverted to its former rate above three per cent.

“After consulting with the Department of Finance, Manulife Bank has withdrawn the promotional campaign and reverted to our previous posted rate,” the company said in a statement.

Read the full article over at the CBC.

Are a few pips in mortgage rate really driving people to run out and overpay?

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Mansur al-Hallaj

A minister shakes a finger at a business trying to compete within legal limits*, and the business abides. Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be “free market” and such?

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* the wisdom of laws and limits is a different story.

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Anonymous

73,
bulls are bulls and bears are scarely stupid!

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RaggedyRenter

Tsur isn’t stupid. He knows exactly which side of his bread is buttered. He probably won’t lie, but we won’t get anything directly bearish from him. The closest we’ll get is him acknowledging some known facts and add a vaguely bearish statement with a qualifier.

“Hey, we know that [HPI is down/sales are slow/there are a lot of inventory], and maybe [the next decade will not mirror the last decade/the demand curve will readjust/the price will gradually rationalize] if [the interest rate increases/there’s an external shock to the economy/black swan event/there’s no more appetite for RE investment]”

With these guys, what they don’t say matters more than what they do say.

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jesse

“Sounds like Tsur is turning bearish”

Tsur commented about an “interesting dynamic at play” with the near cessation of the investor immigrant program. The moderator, Jim Sutherland, made mention of investor immigrants using other provinces as means to get into Canada but speculated most were destined for Vancouver.

Also Sutherland referenced the good work done here and on other blogs on the MOI and house prices.

I know Somerville gets a hard time around here but he brought some decent stuff to the debate.

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gokou3

MLS V997061 description starts off like this:

“NEVER USED! This apartment is brand new and has never been lived in. ”

The interesting thing about this condo unit is, it was completed in 2007. Yes, vacant for 6 years.

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real_professional

The VCI army seems fatigued as of late.

Bulls are scared Bears are bored ..

I must admit, real estate analysis isn’t as fun as it used to be. Vancouver real estate is like those villains in a low budget movie that gets shot ten times and still is kind of trying to make a come back. You know the villain is going to be dead in a few minutes but why won’t he die already.

The worst will be the post hemorrhaging twitches

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Anonymous

67,
stur never turns bearish, he speaks the facts. only stupid narrow-minded bears never see it.

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Anonymous

65,
your thinking is a waste product of bear society. you are hiding under your mama basement, arent you.

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kabloona

@62:

Yeah the whole “Richmond median price drop” thread is gone on the Whisperer’s site. Garth still has the discussion up on one of his posts (Mar 19th)…if anybody cares to read it.

I guess somebody made some threats…..

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Short'em High

#64. http://vancouverpricedrop.wordpress.com/

That’s a great resource for studying price change and delisting timing. It looks like 3 month listing contracts are most common resulting in 3 or 4 different listing numbers per year in recent years.

I didn’t connect Observer with price drop. Thanks!

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gokou3

Re #60:

“Housing analyst Tsur Somerville, director of UBC’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, said the data he has seen also indicate that Vancouver built more housing in the 2006-2011 period than the number of new households that were added to the city’s ranks.

That means investors. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as those units are occupied, said Mr. Somerville, also on the panel.

“The problem is vacant units since that’s demand for real estate without housing people.””

Sounds like Tsur is turning bearish?

Btw, good thing to see evidence of overbuilding in MSM.

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real_professional

#51

As a spy on the battle field what are you seeing?

I’ve noted a considerable pick up in sales 63% sales to list.

There was a point where I would automatically and mentally multiply the sales by four and compare it to see if it was above or below the New Listings numbers. Perhaps it is spring.

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Anonymous

“I’m having trouble imagining parents naming their daughter “Lexie” without having the expectation of her growing up to become a ho or a stripper. Her folks likely wrote her off as an “under achiever” by pursuing a real estate “career.”

Curiously enough, the course for being a ho or a stripper is the same length as the one for being a RE agent. In fact, the same topics are covered which allows for seamless transition between professions. Even more curiously, two of the professions involve fucking the customer while the third presents a relaxing opportunity to suck back a few cold ones with your buddies.

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Ray

@59 – It’s Vancouver Price Drop. Google it.

Any time a new MLS number is issued, the DOM starts back at 0. There are examples on his blog of sellers that have used 10+ MLS numbers already *this year*. In each case, I suspect they make it to the “Newly Listed Homes” notification that all the Realtors send out to their email subscription lists… which, as you correctly compared with Craigslist, is why they do it.

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real_professional

Teranet Summary The composite indices continued their slide to 6 months of steady price drops. That’s half a year of declining prices which trumps any seasonal argument. Upward momentum has definitely stalled nationally. Prior to this month, the national price weakness was blamed on the Vancouver market. Yet, this month Vancouver is up 0.71% (See below) but the Canadian aggregate continued to slide. Perhaps Cyprus is to blame or Al Qaeda ? Every market with the exception of Halifax and Quebec city are down from their all-time highs. Sales pair volume paints an even weaker picture with 6 markets in Canada showing volume declines measuring over 11% from their 10 year February averages. This includes Vancouver @ – 39%, Victoria @ -38%; these two are the worst of the 6 declining markets. Vancouver bucked the national trend providing a dead… Read more »

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JR

Looks like Whisperer got censored.

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Vote Down The Facts

Short Em, DOM is bound to drop after a big expiry day – it’s the old listings that are expiring.

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Turkey

,

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/vancouvers-vacancies-point-to-investors-not-residents/article10044403/

I generally like Frances Bula’s writing. But, in this case, she doesn’t distinguish between investors and foreign investors until the 12th paragraph. That’s long after most readers have started skipping sentences. Vancouverites are all too willing to conflate investors and foreign investors, and don’t need help from sloppy journalism.

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Short'em High

Says: “If Observer’s blog has taught us anything, it’s that DOM is the most manipulated and useless statistic…”

At what address is Observer’s blog? I was wondering myself why Rob’s DOM number never gets larger than about 80 days nor smaller than about 40 days. After a big expiry day, the number drops significantly and then climbs gradually.

That sounds interesting about the 4 year listing that shows up as 0 days on market. It could explain the huge number of changes every day on Larry’s changes number. Fields other than price are being tampered with every day on many listings. Perhaps this is similar to Craigslist scam of deleting and reposting every day to get the top position in the search results.

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Anonymous

“Having 2 kids that are 12, 14 yrs old, and seeing education costs around the corner, it infuriates me that free money is made available exclusively to one age group and not another.”

Me too! Just like when the NDP threw away all that cash to the grunts to build those impossibly shitty fast cats.

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VHB

Total days 20 Days elapsed so far 14 Weekends / holidays 6 Days missing 0 Days remaining 6 7 Day Moving Average: Sales 120 7 Day Moving Average: Listings 214 SALES Sales so far 1624 Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 718 Projected month end total 2342 NEW LISTINGS Listings so far 3440 Projection for rest of month (using 7day MA) 1286 Projected month end total 4726 Sell-list so far 47.2% Projected month-end sell-list 49.5% MONTHS OF INVENTORY Inventory as of Mar 20th, 2013 16366 MoI at this sales pace 6.99 Continuing low sales and low new listings year sell list sell/list 2001 2315 3805 60.8% 2002 3392 5168 65.6% 2003 3304 4272 77.3% 2004 4371 5709 76.6% 2005 3938 5083 77.5% 2006 4033 5767 69.9% 2007 3582 5456 65.7% 2008 2997 5674 52.8% 2009 2265 4385 51.7%… Read more »

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Ray

@39 – If Observer’s blog has taught us anything, it’s that DOM is the most manipulated and useless statistic gathered on the MLS. Don’t ever rely on it. The number of examples where DOM is 1 and the home has been on the market for 4+ years is unlimited.

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This is a test

Why are my posts banned?

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