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Canadian Mortgage Insurer Tells US Hedge Funds Why Canada’s Housing Bubble Is Immortal. Hilarity Ensues
Canadian Mortgage Insurer Tells US Hedge Funds Why Canada’s Housing Bubble Is Immortal. Hilarity Ensues
Home prices in Canada’s two largest metro areas have been red-hot for years. In May, the average selling price for all types of homes in the Greater Toronto Area jumped 11% from a year ago to C$649,600 on a 6% increase in sales. In Greater Vancouver, the composite benchmark price for all homes rose 9.4% to C$684,400 on a 23% increase in sales.
But these overall price changes paper over what’s happening with detached homes,whose prices soared 14% to C$1,104,900 in Vancouver and 18% to C$1,115,120 in Toronto.
Already last summer, Fitch fretted about overvaluation in housing and the high debt burden relative to disposable income of Canadian households. At about the same time, seven in ten mortgage lenders expressed concerns in a poll by FICO that home prices were in a “bubble” that could burst any time. Last October, the Bank of Canada thought that the housing bubble could threaten Canada’s financial stability.
This January, Deutsche Bank estimated that homes in Canada were 63% overvalued. In March, the IMF warned that high household debt levels and the “overheated housing market” are two risks it would “need to keep an eye on.” In April, the Economistdetermined that home prices in Canada were overvalued by 35% when compared to incomes, and 89% when compared to rents.
Now hedge funds are trying to engineer ways to short the Canadian housing market one way or the other, because surely this would be another “short of a lifetime.”
Maybe they’re right: beyond Toronto and Vancouver, the housing market is already drifting lower.
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The High Price of Free Money: Now US Bankers Fear Financial, Social, or Political ‘Instability’ | Wolf Street
Something is changing about the perception of the Fed’s free-money policies. While we’ve lambasted them for their nefarious effects on the real economy and the inequality they produce, Wall Street, the prime beneficiary, has been bombastically gung-ho about them. And the mainstream media have praised the Fed’s “bold action,” as it’s called, at every twist and turn.
But now even Wall Street is getting cold feet. The official warning shot came from Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who admitted suddenly that “the extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me.”
Then bankers chimed in. FICO, which produces the infamous credit score, found in its latest survey of North American bank risk managers that 62% of them thought “the wealth gap poses a growing risk to the financial system.”
With the economy so dependent on consumer spending, “it makes sense that the concentration of wealth would raise flags among bank risk managers,” explained Andrew Jennings, FICO chief analytics officer. “This concern was echoed on a global scale by Credit Suisse in a recent report that found many indicators of wealth inequality are reaching levels that could result in social or political instability.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
