Better late than never...

The announcement from Flaherty on home mortgages:

• Mortgage amortization periods will be reduced from 35 years to 30 years.
• The maximum amount Canadians can borrow to refinance their mortgages will be lowered from 90 per cent to 85 per cent of the value of their homes.
• The government will withdraw its insurance backing on lines of credit secured on homes, such as home equity lines of credit

You have to wonder why in God's name the government (ie us suckers) even got into insuring HELOCs (number 3)

These will not take effect until March 18th so bank loan officers can squeeze a few more people over the line.

BTW the last changes in lowered max amortization from 40 to 35 and max refinance to 90 from 95%. It really didn't have much of an effect on housing prices, so I don't have much hope for this either. Now shuttering the CMHC or taxing 'empty homes' would have a bigger effect, but I wont hold out hope for that.

Anyway it is a start- but of course it is always better NOT to start a fire than to try and put it out. Remember that for next time Mr F.

Few quick things

1) Things have really ground to a halt in Whistler. How's 350 weeks of inventory...OK so it's only based on one week's sales, but we bears rarely get to gloat.

2) Egghead..how about reading about how Saint Reagan set the stage for the S and L debacle, and how he blew a huge hole in the US debt.

As to the current situation here's a well known well money manager who clearly states how current policies are helping the wealthy (stock-holders, CEO's, Wall Street types) get richer, while the Middle Class is getting squeezed by commodity speculation (probably Goldman again) and will soon face reduced services and less jobs due to municipal bankruptcies. You know all those unnecessary jobs like firemen and cops and garbage collectors..I am sure we will see it come here too.

Ok folks we should see listings start rising as we head into Feb. The list/sales will be our first hint that the trend is chnaging here as it has in the Ok and Whistler.

Going to be out of town for a couple of weeks.

Larry Yatter has the December average prices, which are skewed by the low volume.

See you for some dissection of numbers in mid-January.

BTW- I am really getting to like Ben's site. We share the same economic outlook- and of course we could both be very wrong :)

Meanwhile wan't to read some good old angst and anger?