" wrote:

As for Canada:

According to some experts, as lenders lower their standards, Canadians
increasingly face mortgage risk. In a time where household debt is at
an all-time high and the economy is considered unstable at best,
lenders are loosening their standards when they should be, perhaps,
being a little stricter.

That is so full of horse **** it's not even funny.

Our federal gov't has been changing the mortgage rules in small steps
over the past few years, the most recent change just went into effect
about a week ago. You now need to put 20% down to get a mortgage in
Canada. For the average american, that is a jaw-dropping amount. These
minimum down payments, combined with the lack of mortgage deductability,
combined with the lack of inventory over-building means that we will not
see the sort of decline in home prices in Canada that is killing you
americans.

We also have federal mortgage insurance (CMHC) that you MUST pay into
(and will cover you) if you put down less than 25%. That insurance, by
the way, doesn't cover homes costing more than a million dollars.

Oh, and get a load of this:

===============
So Much For "Housing Has Bottomed" - Shadow Housing Inventory Resumes
Upward Climb

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/so-muc...s-upward-climb

Appropriately coming just after today's Housing Starts data, which
captured MSM headlines will blast was "the highest since 2008" is the
following chart from this morning's Bloomberg Brief, which shows
precisely the reason why "housing has bottomed" - and it has nothing to
do with organic demand rising. No, it has everything with excess
inventory once again starting to pile up, which means that the imbalance
in the supply and demand curves is purely a function of shadow inventory
being stocked away, and that there is once again no true clearing price.

From Bloomberg:

The shadow inventory of homes – those in foreclosure plus those 90 days
late on mortgage payments – is on the rise again, a further indication
that the supply side has not yet healed. Accoring to RealtyTrac,
foreclosure starts jumped 6 percent on a year ago basis in the second
quarter, the first year-over-year increase since 2009. There are roughly
4.16 million homes that could begin to flow to market.

Once one takes the number of homeowners 30- to 90-days late on their
mortgage payments and includes the likely default of those that have
negative equity on their homes, there is a strong possibility more than
6.5 million additional foreclosures will enter the pipeline. The
addition of homes that banks may be holding back suggests a much larger
number. Laurie Goodman of Amherst Securities Group has testified before
Congress that it could be as high as between 8 and 10 million.
==================

You are so ****ed as a country over your housing and mortgage situation
- created by George W-****ing Bush. He made sure your gov't went
bankrupt by STARTING 2 illegal "wars" and then he made sure the average
american went bankrupt by incentivising an insane level of home building
and sub-prime mortgages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkAtUq0OJ68

The American Dream.

Alive and well - in Canada.