Are 100-year amortizations coming to Canada: CMHC warns “COVID-19 will raise household debt levels and ‘drag on GDP growth” – May 23, 2020,
In my opinion, where Canada is headed Japan has already been, I’ve never personally thought the Canadian housing market would crash the way some people have said, I’ve stated plenty f times that it could crash the way most predicted it would, but I personally think it’s unlikely, because Canadians in my opinion, don’t understand Austrian economics at the same levels Americans do.
So I’ll give you an example of what I mean, during the 2016 U.S Presidential election, the Libertarian Party in the United States got 4,489,233 total votes and 3.27% of the national vote! in Canada the Conservative Party of Canada got 6,239,227 total votes during our Federal election, Maxime Bernier got close to 300,000 total votes.
America right now could justifiably start its own Libertarian COUNTRY!, because just like Canada, a lot of the people who voted for the Republicans are indeed Libertarians, but they voted to win! I bring this up because Canada is filled with Keynesians, it’s unlikely in my opinion that the cost of living in Canada is going down.
Until I see it happening, I don’t believe it can happen, I think they’ll be a period where it’s forced on us, but I don’t know if we’re there yet. A lot of Canadians don’t understand the role the CMHC plays in propping up housing prices, the Canadian government is involved with mortgage-backed securities and mortgage insurance and nobody in Canada seems to care.
The Bank of Canada interest rates aren’t low to help Alberta, interest rates are ow to save the BC and Ontario housing markets from crashing, an Asset crash can make people who thought they were rich extremely poor. Imagine your mortgage is more than your house will sell for, for the next 30 years?
Imagine you bought a house or condo to rent it out and the tenants can no longer pay you rent and if you sell this house or condo, you’ll get 75 cents on the dollar? furthermore, imagine while you were selling other people in similar situations as you were also selling and there were no buyers, What do you think would happen? a massive housing crash, of course.
One of the first things Trudeau’s government did during the COVID-19 outbreak was bailout mortgage holders, the banks are doing that right now, I suspect this will continue in some capacity, I can say how it will continue because I don’t know, Keynesians have all sort of tricks up their sleeves, but the low hanging fruit is 100-year amortization, which could drop monthly payments, it’s only because of a government regulation why 100-year amortization doesn’t exist now.
Will more Government intervention work? I don’t know, I don’t care, when it comes to Canada my position is simple, expect inflation and don’t be surprised if there’s hyper-inflation! Most Canadians don’t understand Austrian economics and therefore the Canadian government, Canadian government insurances, and our central banks can get away with murder!
I still laugh when I think about when a few years back the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S greenback and people of political prominence in Canada openly said that the Candian dollar needs to be devalued when this happened most Canadians were complacent, that event told me everything I needed to know about Canadians and the value of Canadian dollars!
In America, there’s push back, in America, their NDP party is the Libertarian Party, the Democrats in the United States are scared to split the vote, if Trump ever attempted to do what Trudeau did with Assault rifles in Canada in America, there would be major pushback, Trump might even lose his life.
With America the people don’t love or trust their government they tolerate it! In Canada, we trust our government, we assume the government is smarter than we are and this allows us to have a ridiculous cost of living in this country protected by equalization payments, so in America, the Red and Blue States operate independently for the most part, sure they have a function of equalization payments in America, but it’s nothing like Canada and for me, this is the exact reason why I don’t see a housing market crash, I see the government doing some set of intervention to keep asset prices in Canada propped up.
Interesting times ahead!