National Mortgage Related News Archive

• 'Buy American' deal exempts Canadian firms
  Feb 05, 2010 — Canadian companies will be exempt from a protectionist "Buy American" clause in the U.S. government's $787-billion US economic stimulus package, the federal government announced Friday. The deal involves 37 U.S. states that adhere to the World Trade Organization's government procurement agreement, effectively ending a dispute that has raged since Congress passed the protectionist measures in 2009.
  Source: News Staff, CBC
  
• Lumber market may point to strength in housing
  Feb 05, 2010 — One of the surprising bright spots in global commodity markets over the past few weeks has been lumber, a commodity that you would think would be in agony, given the sad state of the U.S. home market. Instead, raw lumber prices are up more than 25% this year, according to Jon Markman of Markman Capital Insight.
  Source: Jonathan Ratner, National Post
  
• Step away from the equity
  Feb 05, 2010 — If you have a lot of unused RRSP contribution space but lack the ready cash to make a payment, it may be tempting to borrow the money to make the investment. It may seem that taking out a bank loan or line of credit would be one way to go, with finance rates being as low as they are these days. Another way to find some cash - at a lower apparent rate - would be to borrow from your home's equity.
  Source: Helen Morris, National Post
  
• GMAC loses $5-billion in quarter
  Feb 04, 2010 — Home and auto lender GMAC Financial Services said Thursday it lost $5-billion in the last three months of 2009, as losses from its mortgage operations kept the company in the red for another quarter.
  Source: Dan Strumpf, Report on Business
  
• As insults fly, U.S. business lending suffers
  Feb 04, 2010 — When it comes to the relationship between President Barack Obama and the major U.S. banks, an insult only every 10 minutes is what passes for an olive branch. That was the ratio in the State of the Union address: 69 minutes of speechifying and only a half-dozen or so mild digs at those dastardly bankers. In fact, Mr. Obama went a step further on the road to detente, declaring that he's "not interested in punishing banks."
  Source: Boyd Erman, Report on Business
  
• Alberta sees big jump in construction permits
  Feb 04, 2010 — Building plans for commercial and multi-family projects vaulted Alberta to December's second biggest monthly gain in the value of construction permits. ATB Financial economist Dan Sumner noted the gains came from Calgary's higher issuance of commercial and multi-family permits. The value of permits in Calgary jumped 72 per cent from November and 173 per cent from a year earlier.
  Source: Bill Mah, Edmonton Journal
  
• Economic data soft, but Canada is on the mend
  Feb 04, 2010 — Canadian data for building permits and purchasing activity were weaker than expected, but both indicators showed growth from the previous month and added to the view that the Canadian economy is healing. Purchasing activity edged back into expansion territory in January, according to the Ivey Purchasing Managers Index. The index edged up to 50.8 in January from 48.4 in December, but was slightly below market forecasts for a rise to 52.5.
  Source: Ka Yan Ng, Globe Investor
  
• Canadians lack basic financial know-how
  Feb 04, 2010 — Less than a year after the massive global financial crisis, a vast majority of Canadians do not understand the basic principles of financial risk and even fewer are taking steps to educate themselves. A global survey released Thursday found that only 13 per cent of Canadians could answer three basic questions about financial risk, results that match the average across the other countries studied.
  Source: Roma Luciw, Globe Investor
  
• How to buy or sell a home privately
  Feb 03, 2010 — Walter Melanson and reporter Steve Ladurantaye will be online Wednesday Feb. 3 at noon (ET) to take your questions in a live discussion on how to buy or sell a home privately. Walter Melanson is a private sale professional and a managing director of PropertyGuys.com Inc. Founded in 1998, PropertyGuys.com has helped more than 40,000 Canadians buy and sell homes privately. As one of the original members of the business development team, Walter Melanson has a background in marketing, finance and real estate.
  Source: Walter Melanson, Steve Ladurantaye, Globe Investor
  
• Housing prices soar
  Feb 03, 2010 — House prices in Greater Vancouver reached new highs last month even as the number of new listings soared. "Although home prices in the region have largely returned to their previous peaks, we still see a significant number of first-time and move-up buyers in the market, thanks to low interest rates and the diverse range of properties available today," board president-elect Jake Moldowan said.
  Source: News Staff, The Province
  
• Builders rap possible sales tax hike
  Feb 03, 2010 — Increasing the sales tax would hammer Nova Scotia homebuilders, says the association that represents more than 300 firms. A two per cent hike in the sales tax would add $6,000 to the price of a $300,000 home, Paul Pettipas, chief executive officer of the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association, said Tuesday.
  Source: Chris Lambie, The Chronicle Herald
  
• Why this budget will be Flaherty's toughest
  Feb 02, 2010 — The state of Canada's labour market is a reminder that the budget Mr. Flaherty is now preparing will be much different than his first in 2006. Back then, he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had a surplus of more than $13-billion, a substantial cushion with which to test their general philosophy that the surest way to a thriving economy is lower taxes and minimal intervention. But along with destroying more than 300,000 jobs, the financial crisis also has wrecked the country's finances. The surplus is gone, replaced by a record deficit of $56-billion.
  Source: Kevin Carmichael, Report on Business
  
• Awash in a sea of debt
  Feb 02, 2010 — Room 32 of the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver is where dreams of owning a home go to die. It's the main foreclosure court in the Lower Mainland, where banks and other lenders ultimately turn when homeowners can't keep up with their mortgage payments. The homes get seized, then sold off. "There are many tears on that carpet," says Andrew Bury, a partner at Gowlings and the top foreclosure lawyer in the city. But lately the cramped courtroom has come to represent something else entirely-the utter insanity of Canada's red hot housing market.
  Source: Jason Kirby, Macleans
  
• Consumer debt loads are the new concern
  Feb 01, 2010 — The optimism that consumers felt heading into this year was short-lived, and has been overcome by nagging concerns over their debt loads. The economy is recovering its footing, thanks to consumers who provided it with a shoulder to lean on by taking advantage of exceptionally low interest rates to buy homes and other big-ticket items.
  Source: Tara Perkins, Report on Business
  
• The battle to unlock the housing market
  Feb 01, 2010 — The battle to free real estate data is well advanced in the United States. Now, it is coming to a head in Canada as the technological attack on the old order is bolstered by both industry rebels and government: The federal Competition Bureau accuses the industry of dampening competition and consumer choice. To consumers whose houses often sell in a few days - but still net agents tens of thousands of dollars in commissions - Canada's real estate boom has made MLS's monopoly on information seem all the more anachronistic.
  Source: Steve Ladurantaye, Report on Business
  
• Forestry urged to embrace 'bio-economy'
  Feb 01, 2010 — Canada's forest products industry must move quickly to embrace the so-called "bio-economy" if it is to once again become an engine of growth in the post-recession era, says a new study. Called "The Future Bio-pathways Project," the study recommends that a key to the recovery of the recession-ravaged forestry business is the integration of bio-products and bio-energy into existing lumber, newsprint and pulp-and-paper operations.
  Source: Bertrand Marotte, The Globe and Mail
  
• Real-estate sales likely to moderate
  Jan 30, 2010 — Greater Victoria's real estate market is forecast to deliver a "silver-medal performance" this year and slow further in 2011 as interest rates rise and demand ebbs. These predictions follow a surge in sales in the latter part of 2009, when buyers raced back into the housing market after the recession scared them away.
  Source: Carla Wilson, Times Colonist
  
• Million-dollar mortgages
  Jan 29, 2010 — One of the economic conundrums of the past year has been the great divergence in the Canadian and U.S. housing markets. While American home prices swooned in 2009, the Canadian market only stumbled before resuming its inexorable climb upward. As Barrie McKenna reported in The Globe and Mail recently, there are two schools of thought as to what's behind this discrepancy. One suggests that Canada, with its fiscally sound banks, simply avoided the bubble. The other, bruited by David Rosenberg-chief strategist at Toronto-based Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc.-is more pessimistic. His assessment: The Canadian housing market is overvalued, in the range of 15% to 35%. In other words, we are dangerously close to bubbledom.
  Source: Gary Salewicz, Report on Business
  
• Canada's economy picks up steam
  Jan 29, 2010 — Canada's economy expanded for a third straight month in November, as mining, energy and wholesale trade helped pull the country further out of recession. The 0.4 per-cent growth in the month, reported Friday by Statistics Canada, was more than economists expected. The federal statistics gathering agency also revised October's growth figure up to 0.3 per cent, from the initially reported 0.2 pert cent. September's reading was also revised up a tenth of a percentage point.
  Source: Jeremy Torobin, Report on Business
  
• Suburbs the big winner for price appreciation
  Jan 29, 2010 — To those who bought a home in the suburbs last year because they couldn't afford a property downtown: Start counting your cash. Home buyers in the Toronto market looking for affordable single detached homes headed to the burbs, resulting in a run-up in prices with property outside the central city appreciating the most in 2009 over 2008, according to a Return on Investment report by ReMax Ontario Atlantic Canada.
  Source: Tony Wong, Your Home
  
• Rob Carrick took your mortgage questions
  Jan 29, 2010 — Globe Investor's personal finance columnist Rob Carrick took questions about the pros and cons of leveraging your mortgage. Rob Carrick has been writing about personal finance, business and economics for close to 20 years. He joined The Globe and Mail in late 1996 as an investment reporter and has been personal finance columnist since November 1998. His latest book, Rob Carrick's Guide to What's Good, Bad and Downright Awful in Canadian Investments Today, has just been published by Doubleday Canada.
  Source: Rob Carrick, Report on Business
  
• Mortgage demand drives bonds
  Jan 28, 2010 — They were the biggest issuance in the Canadian marketplace last year. But there were no media headlines or industry buzz. The tried and true Canada Mortgage Bonds (CMB) churned out through a trust set up by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. have been so much part of the landscape that their growth goes almost unnoticed.
  Source: Karen Mazurkewich, Financial Post
  
• Variable or fixed? Both options have merit
  Jan 28, 2010 — Whether you prefer to go fixed or variable with your mortgage, there are developments you need to know about if you want protection against rising rates and ways to outsmart your bank. Let's start with fixed-rate mortgages, where we continue to see borrowing costs at close to historic lows. Most people go with a five-year term, but there's a case to be made for choosing terms of seven or even 10 years.
  Source: Rob Carrick, The Globe and Mail
  
• An interest rate hike this summer?
  Jan 27, 2010 — Canadian market watchers will get some good news this week. The predictions for a "blowout" reading on fourth-quarter GDP are already out there and it is likely to be an abnormally strong number. But for anyone who thinks a big number is likely to help lock in a rate hike this summer, I would suggest that is not going to happen. In fact, my view is that the Bank of Canada will not be raising rates until mid-2011 - at the earliest.
  Source: David Rosenberg, Globe Investor
  
• Ready for less heady home pricing?
  Jan 27, 2010 — Home price appreciation will slow in the Toronto market this year as a looming supply of new homes is completed, giving consumers more choice and helping to mitigate future gains, a bank study said. "The stock of new construction is rising and that will have the effect of slowing any price increases," National Bank of Canada senior economist Marc Pinsonneault said Tuesday.
  Source: Tony Wong, Your Home
  
• Canada resale home price index up for 7th month
  Jan 27, 2010 — Canadian home resale prices rose for a seventh straight month in November on gains in all six major metropolitan markets surveyed, according to a report on Wednesday. The Teranet-National Bank composite house price index, which measures price changes for repeat sales of single-family homes, showed overall prices were up 0.8 percent in November from October. Vancouver led the gains, rising 1.9 percent, the only market to exceed the national average. Without Vancouver, the composite index would have been up 0.5 percent, the report said.
  Source: Reuters, Globe Investor
  
• Think Victoria housing is pricey? You're right
  Jan 26, 2010 — Vancouver and Victoria rank No. 1 and No. 8 respectively among 272 international markets in lack of housing affordability, according to a report released yesterday by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Among 28 markets in Canada, Vancouver and Victoria take the top two spots, followed by Abbotsford and Kelowna, the report said. All four centres are considered "severely unaffordable."
  Source: Carla Wilson, Times Colonist
  
• U.S. home prices rise again
  Jan 26, 2010 — Home prices rose for the sixth straight month in November, with 14 of 20 metro areas posting improvements from the month before. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday inched up 0.2 per cent to a seasonally adjusted reading of 145.49. The index was off 5.3 per cent from November last year, nearly matching analyst's estimates that it would fall by 5.1 per cent.
  Source: News Staff, CTV
  
• IMF boosts Canadian growth forecast
  Jan 26, 2010 — The International Monetary Fund lifted its forecast for Canada's economic growth Tuesday, saying it will likely expand 2.6 per cent in 2010. Its previous forecast was 2.1 per cent growth this year. The Canadian economy will expand 3.6 per cent in 2011, the IMF said in an update to its world economic outlook.
  Source: Tavia Grant, Report on Business
  
• 'Things could go more right than expected'
  Jan 25, 2010 — As governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney has had a ringside seat on the global credit crisis. But he is in the fortunate position that his own country's financial system remains relatively healthy. Mr Carney also has the advantage of having seen regulation from both sides of the table. He worked at Goldman Sachs for more than a decade before moving into government. In a video interview with FT.com, Mr Carney, 44, discussed President Barack Obama's proposals to limit the size and scope of the biggest US banks as well as the outlook for the global economy and Canada's financial system.
  Source: Chrystia Freeland, Bernard Simon, Report on Buisness