The most popular rates this week continue to be the 3.09 5 year rate and the 3.89 10 year rate.
This week Adrienne Warren, a Bank of Nova Scotia economist, expects Canada to be in elite company when census figures come out next month. She expects us to be at over 70% home ownership. Based on the 2006 census we were at 68.4%. Some countries like Italy and Spain could be as high as 80% where Switzerland is around 30% due to rather expensive real estate. The United States were around 70% when the market fell and are around 66% right now.
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) released data last week that showed home prices had actually slipped 2% from a year ago to an average of $353,147.
Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets said we are at the peak of home ownership and it will probably go down.
Inflation rates fell unexpectedly in July, pulled lower by falling energy prices as Stats Can reported consumer prices were up just 1.3% from a year ago. The softer-than-expected report Friday buys the Bank of Canada even more time to keep interest rates low.
CMHC came out with some new forecasting, predicting Canada will see 207,200 housing starts in 2012 and 193,100 next year. They predict a national house average price of $368,000 which is far off from the $353,147 that CREA predicted. Next year they are predicting at price of $377,300. They said that balanced market conditions in most local housing markets will result in a slowing in house price growth. I believe in Ottawa, we are still in a slight buyers market.
Contact me at nick@mortgageinottawa.com or 613-294-4475
