Interest rate is a big factor to home price. But I don't think your 'bet' is good. Of course high interest rate pushes the home price down, but who is controlling the interest rate? The government, and they WILL (99%) manipulate the interest rate so that home price will be stable, or stably...

Maybe I am prejudice on Heloc, but this seems to be another form of leveraging. Rates maybe attractive, but are there strings attached? Will they raise rates depending on economic conditions (or as they see fit)? http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/foreclosures-and-home-atm.html...

I don't know if it's clearly a seller's market yet. I think the real estate market is at the turning point. If you look at the graph for N03 detached (where I track the records), the house price uptrend is 'kinda' broken (house price below the red line since nov 08). To me it seems that the...

Not sure if US bond market is related to Canadian (leading indicator? Please advise MBS-Guru). I have read about this happening in US market early June. See link for the chart on US mortgage rates vs bond yield. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/mortgage-rates-and-ten-year-yield.html

There's also another school of thoughts that the US govn't wants to create inflation, devalue their dollar. That means it's a good time to buy (stuff) in order to fight inflation. Anyways, things change so rapidly it's hard to predict long term. Let's see how it plays out.

Can you please give a link to the 5 year fixed rates?

I heard that rumor tactics very often during down time, as realtors suggest the sellers to hold or rent out, and put the house for sale at some later time. Question is is it true? If it's true, does it happen a lot now? Anyone here know something about this please voice out.

That's true. I miss that sales number part. Well, this can be looked at both ways, since interest rate is down, more ppl will jump in and RE price goes up. The RE price will depend if the unemployment will be increasing this year.

I agree. I suspect it's the low interest rate that drives the sales up. Too bad, I wanted the price to drop further instead of low mortgage rate. Now, I am 50/50 on that we are seeing the bottom of housing market now, mainly because of the low interest rate. Please let me know what you think.

Or buy from a respectible builder. I bought mine from Monarch, it's not bad at all.

Thanks a lot guys!

Anyone knows a better way to find new listings? mls.ca only sort by price and location, but does not have 'days on market' filter. I currently asked an agent to email me new listings (on a specific area) on a daily basis, but I feel bad about it as I am not buying anytime soon. Is there...

yyzer, most of the sales are deteched or semi-s? I agree with what you've observed, and, of course, if I were a 1st time buyer, I would get in right now to enjoy the low interest rate. Question is how long can this '1st time buyer wave' can sustain? Also, if anybody know, is this '1st time...

Please let me know if I were wrong. If the HST is implemented, basic goods like raw meat, veggie, $3.99 or less meals, baby foods & clothings, tampons, 6 or more donuts will be taxed. That doesn't help the poor... I still don't see that average Ontarians will benefit from this.

Those politicians probably have a swiss bank account. I can see that the incentives of pushing this thru is that the politicians will have a 'huge bonuses' paid by the big companies. Average Ontarians will suffer from paying higher taxes.

I am still on the sideline, waiting for the results for this spring/summer. Afterall, I think this is the first spring/summer sale of a downturn market. There is still a lot of downward pressure due to job losses in TO, but I have to say that the mortgage rate is dropping to an attractive level.

Hi CDR, Do you have links/info regarding to how big is that ARMs wave? Ken

This is very good point, and it also applies to the stock market. Only the luckiest will be able to buy at the 'bottom', and far great many people wants to be that.

Well, I don't have stats for other cities. It's not useful anyways, as it's like comparing apple with orange. It's good to know tho. I think there is still a lot of downward pressure in GTA. One main factor (I think) is the big 3, (or the auto sector) and the manufacturing sector. They got...

See http://www.torontorealestateboard.com/consumer_info/market_news/mw2009/pdf/mw0901.pdf TORONTO - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 TREB Members reported 2,670 sales in January from the 5,075 sales reported in the first month of 2008. Of these, 1,106 transactions took place in the City of...