Skip to main content

It's official -- no housing bubble!

Apparently, Canada's minister of finance (Jim Flaherty) today stood in the Chamber (House of Commons) and declared that there is "no housing bubble in Canada", there cannot be because interest rates are low.

On another note, Today the Teranet - National Bank Housing Price Index came out for September 2010, and there's been small correction in the Canadian housing market, its down 1.1% across the country:


Canadian home prices in September were down 1.1% from the previous month, according to the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index™. The monthly decline ended a string of 16 consecutive increases in the composite index since the last monthly deflation in April 2009. For the first time since February 2009, prices fell in all six of the metropolitan markets surveyed. The declines were 2.4% in Halifax, 2.2% in Calgary, 1.6% in Toronto, 0.5% in Ottawa and 0.3% in Montreal and Vancouver. For Vancouver it was the third consecutive monthly decrease and for Calgary it was the second.
This result was reflected in a further deceleration of the 12-month price increase in September, to 7.9% for the composite index. It was the third consecutive month of deceleration, leaving the 12-month rise the smallest since last January. The 12-month increases range quite widely from market to market: 9.2% in Vancouver and Ottawa, 9.0% in Toronto, 7.6% in Montreal, 3.6% in Halifax and 1.7% in Calgary.


From Teranet-National Bank House Price Index 


So maybe not overpriced, but there can be housing movement.  Frankly, housing prices are high in Canada, but so is national income...

Only time will tell

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more