Well I pulled all of my money out a week ago but did some risky stuff on friday buying a leveraged etf for bull oil HOU.TO and this monday i sold it for a nice gain because nigeria seems to have control over the worlds oil lol. Other than that i switched to all cash and probably gonna do the debt sadly we are not debt free anymore we bought a new washer and dryer and this surgery set us back because i wasnt working for 2 weeks but i think the debt thing is a good idea im trying to get my credit rating over 800 its only in the 750 range. So yea not sure the next move but i think the debt thing is good idea and safe.

Samson,

I find the advice given by some of the people on this blog superior to financial planners or bankers for that matter usually im pushed to put my money into gic’s and loaded mutual funds which only one person wins and it aint me.

It’s good to hear from you again, and I hope you and your family are doing well.

The only advice I can give you with any certainty is that this is a very good time to be paying off consumer debt. If you have a good credit rating but you carry any credit card debt, I’d highly recommend moving any high-interest credit card balances you have to a LOC (you can still get very low rates) and pay it down as aggressively as you can. Much more of your cash will be going toward paying sown the principal in this way.

As far as investments go, I’m not sure how much is just unadulterated luck. I managed to get out of pretty much all investments before the crash and got back in (in a small but as diversified way as I could muster) in March. In retrospect I wish I had invested a little more, but there you go. I’m not believing this is a new bull market by any means, but there’s ways of making money (or at least not losing it) in almost any market, I suppose. How are you hedging yourself now?

“The ceiling of Reid Towsley’s apartment-style condominium was leaking, water dripping down steadily onto the floor. It turns out a vapour barrier was never installed beneath the roof, which Towsley believes was missed after repairs were done following a fire in the unit two years ago. The last six months have been a nightmare scenario for Towsley and Cadman, with the contractor responsible for the conversion refusing to take the blame or pay to repair the damage, he says.”

“The balcony windows weren’t sealed, leaving golf ball-sized bulges in the paint from rain leaking in. When they moved in the heat, hot water, or phone lines weren’t hooked up, they say. The bathtub drain was blocked, among a shopping list of other complaints Halter and Seitz list.”

“Two of the basement units in the building have recently been gutted after the sewage pipes backed up, leaving the owner to rebuild them from scratch.”

Thank you, and congratulations on your surgery. I bet it’s great to be able to see clearly again.

I’m definitely not wealthy but I can say that I have a fair bit more discretionary income since I made a commitment to eliminate consumer debt. It’s amazing how quickly monthly interest charges can add up and eat into your budget. Paying these debts off also seems to have given me a different, and perhaps more healthy attitude towards money.

As far as investments are concerned, I did okay following the initial crash and managed to make some money back. However, I was pretty much all in cash when the market started to surge forward and I’ve completely missed the boat on the 30% increase that we’ve seen over the past few months. I’m thinking we’re likely to see another slide but clearly I would have been far better off had I stuck to my earlier plan and stayed in for the ride up. I’m starting to understand that I’m not much of an “investor” so it’s probably best that I not give you money advice.

Obviously, anyone in this sticky situation should consult a lawyer who specializes in this kind of thing but I believe that the protections you refer to require that the mortgagor be a natural person, occupying the property as a primary residence, who used the mortgage proceeds to pay the purchase price of a property. Also, I don’t think that guarantors enjoy the same protections. There are probably many instances in which a lender could chase someone who defaults.

I would think though that the majority of these issues, if and when they occur will be high ratio mortgages which are insured by the tax payers of Canada. Since it’s your money being used to pay to shortfall, nobody will be too excited about chasing it down.

Like the new blog layout very nicely done.

Crikey and George and Norm,

Got a question for u since u all seem on the wealthy side or comfortably wealthy anyways should i takes all that i earn from the stock market and try to make myself debt free now or should i keep plugging all the cash into the tsx index…or should i just leave it in my wife and i’s TFSA’s so many questions and i dont like asking bankers. About my situation i recently had eye surgery for glucoma so lost a little bit of income in recovery but my wife got a new job which boosted our income to the median income now or probably higher . Ill await ur guys answer and others can chime in as well strangely this blog has given great advice not just for real estate but other stuff as well so i just want to tap into that again since i can see now.

To buy a home let’s say for $280k with 5% down would create a staggering $266k mortgage, it’s so large because people who buy a home at this price point are not super high income earners, typically there average wage earners with average jobs. often with none or little job security. The banks are really the ones who are hard to understand, perhaps because their mortgages are insured by the feds their not worried. Obviously there are a lot of people who do not agree with me and there are a lot of people that do, the bottom line is I would never buy at these prices. Something seems extrordinarily strange when you can live cheaper in Honolulu Hawaii then Saskatoon Saskatchewan. My guess is we will see much cheaper prices in ‘09-’10 and still cheaper in 2010-’11. A lot of these mortgages are going to be underwater and people are just going to walk away for better work elsewhere. Foreclosure will be a forefront topic on this blog in time to come.

Thanks for the comment. Everything from the old site was transferred to this one, so what you’re looking for is here somewhere. We just need to help you find it. If you scroll right to the bottom of this page you’ll find our post “tags.” One of them is “monthly statistics.” Clicking that will bring up all of the posts that focus on monthly numbers including SRAR’s media releases and the “closer look” that I write.

I also have a monthly MLS stats page at http://www.mysaskatoonhome.com/MLS__Stats/page_1723681.html which I have occasionally referenced on this site.

I hope that helps you find what you’re after.

Sask. Party considering 10 per cent flat income tax
http://tinyurl.com/nwvuzw

L.oki, I completely agree with you: “Bad news sells” (one reason I discontinued my newspaper subscription).

Completely unrelated… it was announced that Manitoba (all jokes about a total of 4 operating oil rigs aside) has overtaken both Alberta and Saskatchewan as the most attractive province for investment.
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=1728828

Following close behind, the Alberta Government announced today the fifth amendment (in less than 2 years) to oil and gas royalty rules and went on to hint at more changes.
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=1731857

I think this quote sums it up best: “You need a stable regime, and we don’t have a stable fiscal regime. No other regime has changed so often.”

I have yet to see them take happiness and optimism to the extreme. The news media makes more money selling fear and peril than happiness. Look no further than your daily dose of Lloyd Robertson that include (but are not limited to) terrorism, swine flu, housing crisis, recession, global warming, nuclear testing, political unrest, murder, kidnappings, delivered with a light mix of success stories and smiles. There is the saying, “sex sells”. Well it should be “Bad news sells”.

The tale you relay is somewhat indicative of how influential the news media can be. And I agree that sometimes both camps take it a bit to the extreme. Strangely enough, that always seems to be what sells in the media, though…

I wasn’t suggesting that you’d suggested that. What I was saying was that CREA positioned that statement very prominently in their release. Garth has also failed to recognize that there were a number of qualifiers, and disclosures which were prominent in this release. His post is far more misleading and deceptive than what CREA put out.

I love how when prices started to fall people would say, “look at those realtors quoting year-over-year numbers when prices are clearly falling. It’s so misleading.” Now the tune has changed to “prices are down year-over-year. How can you tell us that they’re going up?”

I’m not a fan of all the cheerleading the real estate industry engages in but some of the spin that comes from the bear camp is equally repulsive. This particular rush to the realtor bashing is a terrific example.

“…the gulf is widening between what most Canadians think is happening to the economy, and actual developments. Cheerleading economists, self-dealing realtors and whoring media outlets have allowed the perception to spread that conditions (as CREA’s release stated), “have returned to pre-recession levels.” -and-
“…It might be in CREA’s own interests to misled the country.” -and-
“…this week CREA’s wonky stats were blown out of the water by another housing survey, the Teranet-National Bank index.” -and-
“Media, the real estate industry and their accomplices in the mortgage biz believe they can influence public opinion enough to alter consumer behavior.” -and-
“…Is somebody going to look out for the naive and the young, now being told the coast is clear? Or do we watch them being mowed down next year? Obviously CREA has made its choice.”

Oops… darn that copy and paste (captcha = “mass lamppost”)

There was also this, the second sentence of the CREA’s media release: “The rebound in activity is being led by an increase in transactions in some of the most expensive markets in the country, which is skewing the national average price upward.”

Not exactly buried in the fine print.

I won’t even bother to point out that year-over-years averages for all major markets are prominently posted on their website. Oh, sorry, I wasn’t going to point that out.

…Although it’s hard to overlook statements like:
Resale housing market continues to recover in April
“The national average price also rose in April, to within short reach of the record levels reached one year ago.”
National resale housing continues to rise in May
“The national MLS® residential average sale price in May 2009 reached the highest monthly level on record.”

“The Teranet-National Bank figure is calculated by using the sale prices of homes that have been sold at least once before, a method designed to smooth volatility in the reading. The CREA figure is the average sale price of all homes sold through the MLS. The figure can be skewed by the mix of homes that were sold with the location, size and type of home all impacting price.”

Despite the hubub, I think the CREA was quite clear that the MLS numbers were skewed higher by increased activity in 3 larger, pricier markets. They may not have been clear about some other things, but they were clear about that.

And that’s the $60,000 question, isn’t it…? There was an article this morning in the Financial Post suggesting China should buy more gold to increase its gold reserves (which have shrunk in relation to its foreign exchange reserves). So gold is definitely one possibility at some point. There are also a few energy trusts that are returning decent dividends.
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/trading-desk/mining/story.html?id=1731492

Keep up the good work!