RJMoran

Canadian Real Estate Slows Inexorably- Part III

Hootie is right. In Canada, you HAVE to have 20% down/ a GOOD credit AND employment history (a VERIFIABLE one. :) ! / and a debt ratio of NO more than 38% of income. Nothing even close to 'subprime' is tolerated up there! That damn 'socialist gov. intervention in markets'! It is what gives their real estate market some sanity and stability vs the 'Wild West on Crack' situation we have here in the US...
And as an interesting aside, the two markets in Canada that inflated the most relative to the other metro areas (Vancouver and Toronto) are the ones experiencing the fastest 'deceleration' as the author put it. They won't hit a wall like Vegas or Miami, but within the 'ebb and flow' of real estate, you can see pullback, though, in relative terms, again with saner numbers of 2-4% and not the 30-50% we're seeing in Southern California, Nevada and Florida, et all! The Vancouver market has the 'push' of the Olympics (2010) and will feel the 'pull' of the decline in Chinese money for a bit. The speculative 'fizz' of it's market has all the heart rate of an old folks home when compared to what we've just been through here in the US!
But yes, the 'stability' is built in and a function of choice...