The Collingwood – Blue Mountain Real Estate Blog

Guest Post By David Larock If you like action, last week had it all. Topping the headlines was Thursday’s announcement that the euro-zone countries had reached a solution on a managed Greek debt default, and had also agreed to beef up the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF). As usual during this drawn-out crisis however, the [...]

Citing the sluggish global economy as the reason, the Bank of Canada today announced that it is keeping it’s target for the overnight rate at 1 per cent. Read the full press release here.

Guest Post By David Larock The markets were feeling a little less risk averse last week as money shifted out of low-risk assets, like government bonds, and into higher risk areas like stocks. This drove bond yields up, which gave our lenders higher funding costs, and if the current trend continues, another increase in the [...]

Guest Post By David Larock On Wednesday of last week, Statistics Canada released its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August 2011. While overall CPI rose 3.1%, up from 2.7% in July, this was mainly due to higher food and energy costs, and price increases in these two areas have not historically spurred broader-based [...]

Guest Post By David Larock The Bank of Canada (BoC) met last week and, as expected, left its overnight rate on hold (reminder: variable-mortgage rates move up or down when the BoC changes its overnight rate). The BoC’s accompanying press release should remove any doubt about whether variable rates will stay at ultra-low levels for [...]

Guest Post By David Larock Canadian lenders lowered their variable-rate mortgage discounts last week and for the time being, prime minus .90% is a thing of the past. (The prime rate is currently at 3%, so prime minus .90% works out to a five-year variable-mortgage rate of 2.1%). Most lenders lowered their discounts by 20 [...]

Guest Post By David Larock Last week made for some interesting political theatre when Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty testified before the House of Commons Finance Committee on Friday. Both men tried to reassure us that while the global recovery appears vulnerable, we should still expect to see [...]

Guest Post By David Larock Variable-rate mortgage holders should put Ben Bernanke on their Christmas card list this year. Last week when the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman said he wouldn’t raise short-term rates until mid-2013, it may as well have been Mark Carney uttering those same words. It’s hard to imagine Canadian variable-mortgage rates increasing [...]

Guest Post By David Larock Canadians are still enjoying the story of The Little Economy That Could. While the European and the U.S. economies struggle to reduce their crushing debt levels and Chinese inflation threatens to bring its economy to a rolling boil, we just keep chug-chugging along. But we are also balancing on a [...]

Mark Carney has held the Bank of Canada’s benchmark overnight rate steady once again at 1%.  He does, however, hint to eventual rate hikes in order to meet inflation targets.  Read the full article from The Globe and Mail, here.  If you’re having trouble, please paste this address into your browser:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/interest-rates/mark-carney-signals-rate-hike-coming/article2101904/ What does that [...]