He has created a Facebook profile and it shares that the offical website will be launched shortly. It seems very interesting and if you are looking for a new mortgage you may want to check it out.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Kelowna-BC/Rob-Your-Bank/280943794625?ref=sgm

This change will get a majority of the speculators who have run up market prices out of the market. This will cool the market while promoting balance.

As for my colleagues who are concerned about the impact this change will have on their clients, well, I think they are confusing concern for their clients with concern for their commission cheques.

However, I’m concerned about malleablility of these rules are and fast they can change. Now we don’t want them changing every five minutes, however, we want them to bring relative stability to the general marketplace.

The second point, refinancing, is a good change for the current situation. Slowing upward tendency and capping leverage for the overleveraged is good. But if the markets were to turn, the 5% difference will just as easily exacerbate any downturn that appears suddenly.

If markets drop significantly, many may require financing. Yet with diminished equity, will be less able to, resulting in foreclosure scenarios, leading to futher and imminent downward pressure increasing.

I just hope this sort of corollary has been considered and future considerations will mitigate such eventuality.

No matter what they do, they can’t avoid that prices are overvalued compared to incomes and rents. I think they’re hoping — praying more like — that they can engineer muted declines and avoid a US/UK type scenario.

Good luck. If they do nothing the market will collapse on its own weight. If they do too much they will precipitate a collapse. To think they can balance the market on what is a tip of a pen is a bit optimistic.

the bottom line is, if you’re a serious investor with real estate experience, you can come up with the 20%. If you can’t come up with it, you should reevaluate whether it’s the best investment for you.

It always amazes me how we easily we forget what can happen when too many people get too comfortable making all of their investments with debt.

I have been saving for just over 3 years, and am able to save over 50% of my monthly income. I now have 20% for many homes in my area (van) but not quite enough for a newer home which I will be purchasing.

I may be frugal as hell, and keep my expenses far lower than my savings, but I also don’t earn that much. So like the old age saying goes ‘if I can do it, so can you’.

My main concern.. Is hopes that the olympics don’t have a seriously negative effect on the housing market. And that rent prices don’t drop :)

i) if you want to own a home, you should have some equity in the first place to buy it
ii) refinancing a home is not for the majority of homeowners, and
iii) when applying for a mortgage, you should be prepared to pay interest on the mortgage that is not at some 30- or 40-year historical low. In other words, prove you can live within your means and we’ll allow you to borrow the money.

The changes are simply saving many people from themselves, which is not a bad thing.

Thoughts?

Sorry, but you sound like CREA economist Gregory Klump trying to cheer the market on: “If we have 10 per cent unemployment, that means 90 per cent of people are employed.”

As for defaults, there’s been a 50 per cent increase in mortgages running 90 days or more in arrears in 2009 compared with a year before.

The great debt debate is comical. We live in a country that still has ample opportunity to grow. In the same way that my future wage increases will help me pay my mortgage off faster, increased tax revenues will support debt repayment in the future. Defecit spending is a whole different animal. I don’t support program spending for the sake of keeping people employed.

More than 9 out of ten people are working in Canada. More and more single people are chosing to own their own home. And defaults are almost nonexistent in Canada, even with the drop in real estate prices that occurred in 2009. That just isn’t the Canadian way and the banks will back that statement up.

By the way the government will profit from the debt they took off the bank’s books. CMHC didn’t get a bailout. Canadian banks are held to a high standard of liquidity. The CMHC and the big banks exchanged mortgages for “T-bill like” papers that allowed them to continue to take on mortgages.

The GTA is an interesting place to live. It is no longer a typcial urban Canadian city. The wealth of living options is amazing. Density and transit make living without a car way more feasible than any other city in Canada, other than Vancouver. Unfortunately the GTA also has the greatest disparity in incomes. The fat cats that work downtown (not in manufacturing) are making way more than the average and therefore set the price for residential properties where ever they chose to buy.

35 years should still be an option, due to the harsh economic environment conditions. Very unlikely to stabilize in the short term, some flexibility in the rules is needed.

Open the option to discharge part of the mortgage payments on taxes, this will encourage mortgage repayment faster.

Thks

High housing prices is the new reality especially in the new home market, due to increased building costs, high servicing costs and punative municipal levies. So I don’t see new home prices coming down any more than they have. There is significant refusal to give up the idea of owning a single family home. Lots are as small as they can get in most urban centres. 70% of home buyers will chose to live farther away in order to get their detached home.