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canada

Pending changes to Canadian mortgage rules may bite hard

March 6, 2010

On February 16, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced new rules that affect mortgage lenders and borrowers starting on April 19 of this year.
One of the changes requires that buyers qualify for their high-ratio mortgage based on the “five-year fixed rate” even if their mortgage payments are actually calculated on an available lower rate. In other [...]

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Saskatchewan conditions characteristic of balanced market: CMHC

March 2, 2010
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The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released it Canadian Housing Market Outlook for 2010 today predicting residential resale activity across Canada will grow by just less than five percent to 486,700 while new housing starts rise by roughly as much to 175,150. According to CMHC the average price of a resale home in Canada [...]

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Saskatoon real estate market on its way to full recovery: Remax

February 24, 2010

Remax released it’s 2010 Market Trends Report today stating that “healthy levels” of inventory and demand that is gaining momentum are moving the Saskatoon real estate market towards a “full recovery.”
Other tidbits from the Saskatoon section of the report include the following:

While sales are still off of last year’s numbers average prices continue to edge [...]

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Mortgage lending requirements in Canadian banks about to get tougher

February 16, 2010

Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty will announce this morning a change in lending rules that will further limit the amount of cash buyers can borrow to finance a home according to a report on Globe and Mail.
Stimulus cash, and historically low interest rates have created an enticing environment for Canadian home buyers who have flooded [...]

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MLS rules and CREA will go before a Competition Tribunal

February 9, 2010
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Competition Commissioner Melanie Aitken has moved to bring the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) before a Competition Tribunal to seek a ruling that would force CREA to change MLS rules that she believes limit competition and harm consumers.
Following a lengthy investigation, the Competition Bureau announced in early November that they believed some of CREA’s rules [...]

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Home renovation tax credit deadline looms but there may still be time for you

January 30, 2010
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The opportunity to take advantage of Canada’s Home Renovation Tax Credit expires at midnight on January 31. Obviously, the clock has run out when it comes to hiring a contractor but a quick trip to your favorite home renovation store might be in order if home improvements are part of your plan over the next [...]

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Housing affordability in Saskatoon shows modest year-over-year improvement

January 27, 2010

I can’t imagine that it would come as much of a surprise to anyone that the cost of home ownership in Saskatoon has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the recently released “6th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” owning a Saskatoon home priced at the median in Q3/2009 would have cost about 4.4 times [...]

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Q4 house prices in Saskatoon show increases over last year: Royal LePage

January 7, 2010
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Saskatoon’s real estate markets saw solid improvements in the final quarter of 2009 across housing types, according to the latest Royal LePage Market Survey Forecast and House Price Survey.
In Saskatoon, standard condominiums sold for an average of $197,500, up 5.9 per cent from the same period last year. Detached bungalows sold for an average of [...]

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Flaherty raises some specific actions he could take to cool Canadian housing

December 21, 2009
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For the first time since he initially acknowledged concern over a potential bubble in Canadian housing markets, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has openly indicated in an interview for CTV’s Question Period that higher down payments and shorter amortization periods are both on the table “if” there is further evidence of a bubble.
“If we see further [...]

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Canadian sub-prime lenders seek billion-dollar government bailout

December 10, 2009
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An estimated 30,000 mortgages granted to Canadians with poor credit or insufficient incomes at the height of the Canadian housing boom will not be renewed when they mature over the next three years, according to a story on globeinvestor.com. The sub-prime lenders who granted the loans say that the investors who financed buyers at above [...]

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Greater risk in Canadian housing markets remaining hot than cooling down: TD

December 2, 2009

TD Bank Financial Group released a “Resale Housing Outlook” yesterday that provides some insights into the potential consequences of the quick recovery that the Canadian housing market experienced over the past year. It’s a pretty interesting, “where we’ve been, where we may be headed” report. Some of the ideas that caught my attention from the [...]

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