Category Housing
CMHC reserves revisited
There are two questions that Canadian taxpayers need to ask about the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation: 1. Are CMHC fees for mortgage insurance high enough? 2. Does CMHC have a big enough reserve against potential losses?
Canadian Housing Prices: Some More Data to Ponder
Well, given the continuing pronouncements that Canada’s housing market is overvalued, I thought I would follow up my November post with another take on the data. Among the many suggestions received on that post was to extend the data back further and to look at price/rent ratios. This time, I decided to gather CMHC data […]
Canadian Housing Markets: Bubbles if Necessary but Not Necessarily a Bubble
The debate over whether or not Canada’s housing market is a bubble that is going to crash heated up again this month. Earlier this month, the Financial Times warned that the Canadian housing market was “perched precariously at its peak”. Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said this week that Canada’s housing market was not […]
Random thoughts on house prices
First random thought: a person who was very ignorant about future house prices would nevertheless be almost certain that real (inflation-adjusted) house prices will be lower than today at some time in the future. If we want a null hypothesis about house prices, I think the best null hypothesis would be that the log of […]
Is this a bank bailout by the CMHC? Quotas vs tariffs.
I learn from the CBC that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has imposed a quota of $350 million per month per individual bank (or other lender) on the amount of mortgage-backed securities it will guarantee. Presumably the CMHC did this because the Federal government wanted to put a cap of $85 billion on the […]
Montreal: An Island of Calm?
The latest release on the value of building permits for Canada's CMAs by Statistics Canada provides an interesting perspective on a slowing economy. The numbers show that there has been a downward trend in the total value of permits since late 2012.
Worrying about the Canadian housing market, Part 3: Risks of default
Concerns about the housing market are not really about what happens to the market for houses per se; its role as a driving force for the recovery was done long ago. The real concern is the risk is a US-style financial crisis. I think it's a valid concern, but I don't think it's very likely. UWO's […]
Worrying about the Canadian housing market, Part 2: The effects of higher leverage
In a previous post on the housing market, I noted that we were unlikely to see the sorts of interest rate increases that would generate increases in mortgage payments of the size we saw in the early 1980s (up to 60%). And it's a good thing too, because most new homeowners are not as able […]
Worrying about the Canadian housing market, Part 1: Higher interest rates
Like Nick, I've been thinking and worrying about the Canadian housing market, but not blogging about it. I've decided that it's worth putting some points out for discussion on the topic, if only because it's something we should be talking more about. I've broken it down to three separate posts: the second is here and […]
Things I think about and worry about but don’t blog about
I mean macroeconomic things, not just cars and canoeing and stuff. This is another "selection bias in blogging" post. Probably a more important selection bias than the one I talked about in my previous post. If you thought that my blog posts are about all the things in macroeconomics I think are important, you would […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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