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Jan 08, 2010 Richard Blackwell and Paul Waldie Globe and Mail
Federal agency seeks to strike down what it calls ‘anti-competitive' rules
The federal Competition Bureau says it will challenge the restrictive rules that govern the multiple listing service (MLS) system used by most Canadian home sellers to list their properties.
The MLS system, run by the Canadian Real Estate Association, includes information that is only available to CREA members, and its structure impairs consumer choice, the bureau said Monday.
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Feb 08, 2010 Bill Curry and Kevin Carmichael theglobeandmail.com
No plan to tighten mortgage rules
Iqaluit — Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appears to have no immediate plans to tighten Canadian mortgage rules despite the advice of senior bankers concerned about surging home prices.
Mr. Flaherty said he sees no evidence of a housing bubble in Canada.
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Feb 08, 2010 Phred Dvorak online.wsj.com
Toronto - Dominic Carrasco first tried to sell his studio apartment here in January 2009. The only offers the 42-year-old massage therapist got were well below the 166,900 Canadian dollars he'd paid for it five years earlier.
Last month, Mr. Carrasco tried again. The condominium was snapped up by the woman in charge of posting the information to the real-estate listing site, for C$209,900, or US$196,003, 40% more than the highest bid last year.
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Feb 7, 2010 Garth Turner GreaterFool.ca
When asked by a reporter last week if Canada has a housing bubble (real estate prices increased by 20 times inflation last year), the official CMHC response was: “it is not clear that this perspective is supported by the facts.”
Welcome to Canada. Enjoy the ride. Bags are in the seat pocket in front of you.
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Feb 07, 2010
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Feb 06, 2010 Pete McMartin Vancouver Sun
Well, here we go. Eight years of planning, almost $7 billion-worth of public funds expended, and enough treacly hype about the glory of sport to induce diabetes. There's something deflating about the realization the Games are finally upon us, like the lull after a sugar high.
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Feb 07, 2010 Intellpuke freeinternetpress.com
Canada's top bankers are pushing the government to clamp down on the mortgage market to cool off the rise in home prices.
The heads of the country's six largest banks have privately told policy makers that they fear the wide-ranging economic fallout of a U.S. style binge-and-collapse in housing. To head off any chance of that happening, they are willing to accept tighter rules on mortgages that would slow the real estate market, even though it would mean forgoing some short-term profits from giving out ever bigger mortgages as home prices jump.
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Feb 06, 2010 Gretchen Morgenson nytimes.com
You know we’re in trouble when we’re told that the economic problems in Greece, Portugal and Spain, the most indebted countries in the euro zone, are likely to remain safely contained in those nations.
After all, we heard the same nonsense in 2007 from United States financial leaders talking about the subprime mortgage mess. Both Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary, rolled out to reassure concerned investors that troubles in mortgage land wouldn’t permeate the rest of the economy.
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Feb 06, 2010 Derrick Penner Vancouver Sun
Canada seen as a safe storehouse for personal wealth
It took a couple of months, but sales of luxury homes in 2009 caught up to the general real estate market driven largely by buyers from mainland China, one dealer in high-end homes has found.
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Feb 06, 2010 Boyd Drman and Tara Perkins The Globe and Mail
CEOs tell The Globe they would forgo short-term profits and slow housing sector to avoid any chance of U.S.-style collapse
Canada's top bankers are pushing the government to clamp down on the mortgage market to cool off the rise in home prices.
The heads of the country's six largest banks have privately told policy makers that they fear the wide-ranging economic fallout of a U.S. style binge-and-collapse in housing. To head off any chance of that happening, they are willing to accept tighter rules on mortgages that would slow the real estate market, even though it would mean forgoing some short-term profits from giving out ever bigger mortgages as home prices jump.
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 Feb 5, 2010 Rob Carrick theglobeandmail.com
Is it best to go with a variable-rate or fixed-rate mortgage, is there a bubble in home prices and a close-up of Vancouver and Toronto markets
Welcome to the Globe and Mail Personal Finance Reader. I’m Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist at The Globe, and each week I compile a list of articles, blog postings, videos and websites that represent the best of what the online world has to offer on money-related subjects.
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 Feb 5, 2010 Mark Milke Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Calgary, AB - Is Canada in the midst of a housing bubble? The Bank of Canada doesn’t yet think so. In his recent speech on behalf of the central bank, deputy governor Timothy Lane mostly downplayed the possibility that house prices in Canada are at dangerous, bubble-like levels.
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 Feb 04, 2010 Froogle Scott & vreaa VREAA
In other times, and other places, renting was and is the norm. But during the kind of runaway real estate boom that Vancouver has experienced, just about everybody who can buy, eventually does. The cheap loans and social forces are irresistible. Ownership rates rise to record highs. The renter pool becomes more highly concentrated with vagabonds and the indigent. Renters become an underclass, targets of derision and subjects of pity. As with all things human and economic, however, once this process has moved as far as it can in one direction, the only way forward is for it to come back. There may well come a time when the renters rise up out of their basement suites; a time when renting comes to be seen as prudent, as sensible, as responsible, as trendy, as wise. -vreaa Click to read Part 1, Part2
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Jan 05, 2010 Marco A. Murillo
A recent article by developer James Sclouw from the Canadian Home Builders Association draws some interesting notes and numbers about the situation of the market, nowadays.
His point of view is that the market, after a booming period of almost 7 years has already peaked, gone down and might be showing signs of recovery already. But even he is not optimistic seeing a real recovery, as the strength of current prices might weaken again past the Olympic Games. It seems to me that he could be advising that if home owners do not sell now, they will have to lower their expectations of income gains on real estate investment for the next five years.
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 Feb 04, 2010 Paul Vieira Financial Post
Carney warns job growth will be slow, economic growth could be limited to no more than 2% for much of this decade
Ottawa -- Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada, said on Thursday every Canadian stands to lose $30,000 in income over the next decade — a figure that amounts to nearly $1-trillion — unless Canada improves its “abysmal” productivity levels.
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Feb 04, 2010 The Canadian Press
Winnipeg - Recovery from the global recession is at hand, but Canadian workers and companies should not assume a quick return to the good, old days, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is warning.
The global recession has dramatically changed the way the world economy will work, he said, and both corporations and labour in Canada will need to make serious adjustments if they want to flourish.
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Greater Vancouver sales 23.5 per cent decline in January 2010 (left blue line), listings up, sales down
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Feb 04, 2010 Duncan Davidson wallstreetpit.com
Australia was the first major economy to raise rates, and the Australian central bank (RBA) was widely expected to raise again last week. They held, and it started a parlor game of why the dog hadn’t barked. The RBA’s explanation was clear in its obtuseness. Today the WSJ seems to have found the answer, and reported it not once but twice, here and here, with the following explanation:
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Feb 04, 2010 Rod Nickel reuters
Winnipeg, Manitoba (Reuters) - The Canadian economy is looking up and should recover its lost ground this year, well ahead of Japan and Europe, though possible storms lie ahead, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said on Thursday.
"My message is relatively straightforward: the thaw is coming," he said. "The recovery has begun. After a brutal economic winter, spring is within sight."
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