The current pressure points are mortgage costs (directly related to rate increases), rents (immigration at record levels and huge taxation on new housing supply), food (mostly produced outside Canada) and energy (prices set by international markets and production decreases).
How will higher rates improve these primary contributors?
Greg NevisonToronto
Because post-pandemic inflation was mostly caused by factors outside the labour market – supply chain disruptions, the Ukraine invasion, aggressive corporate profit-taking – the Bank of Canada should not be surprised that rate hikes and an engineered increase in unemployment have had no visible impact on price increases.
Rapid rate hikes can create financial instability, increase inequality and slow the economy, leading to even higher rates of unemployment. Higher credit costs and job loss inflict the most pain on those at the bottom of the economic ladder, who are struggling to pay bills and who are first to be fired.
If inflation is a disease, then I find our central bankers are dispensing quack remedies that damage the most vulnerable.
Owning real estate, we are reminded on an almost daily basis, is one of the best investments a person can make. Having a roof over one’s head is an added bonus.
I am in the fortunate position that my house is fully paid. The best thing I can do to provide for my children in the distant future is to buy real estate and rent it out. Hopefully the rental income is sufficient to cover mortgage costs.
With urban housing prices rising at a pace exceeding interest rates, I cannot help but win out. Urban properties will more likely than not assist my children’s future ability to find employment within commuting distance, and also has growing scarcity value.
So, what is the problem?
Boudewyn van OortVictoria
Union forever
Re “Hot labour summer? Not exactly. But a union revival could bode well for workers” (Editorial, Aug. 14): As a lifelong union man on the West Coast – International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Teamsters, Telecommunications Workers Union, United Steelworkers – I am encouraged by the interest in trades by the youth of Canada and their desire to unionize.
If employers were less greedy in their pursuit of ever-greater six- and seven-figure bonuses, while those who do the work make five figures, they might realize that there’s plenty to go around.
My United Steelworkers Local 1944, Unit 60, has asked for mediation to settle for a new contract with the employer, which was Shaw but is now Rogers. I am preparing for a lockout.
Find me on the picket line. I’ve been there before. In solidarity.
I learned to read before I went to school because my parents read to me, to each other and to themselves. They set an example, and the stories they read stimulated my appetite for more. Early reading of well-written and beautifully illustrated books hones the ear and eye.
Perhaps these litigious parents should be going after the tech guys for the current addiction to screens.
Pamela CornellKingston
J’ai mon voyage
Re “Why the Québécois accent is a joy to behold” (Opinion, Aug. 12): While vocal cords vibrate to produce speech, speech patterns and phonemes are mostly produced in the upper vocal tract via articulation at the teeth, soft palate, etc. While some phonemes are rare cross-linguistically and therefore hard to imitate, I find this is not the case here.
Perhaps French actors can’t get past their own bias against the Québécois accent. “The opposite is not true” – Québécois artists have no problem producing the (standard) French-from-France accent. This makes sense, since they would view the accent positively.
Social perception of dialect affects speech production, and comprehension.
Veena DwivediDirector, Dwivedi Brain and Language Lab, Brock University; St. Catharines, Ont.
An early work-life lesson taught me the benefits of spontaneous and direct interruption. In client presentations on a large project, one colleague often interjected with comments like, “Why would you do that?” or, “That doesn’t make sense.” Meanwhile, I took copious notes and waited for a pause to list detailed (and often lengthy) concerns.
Clients termed my behaviour “calculating.” I learned that sincere reaction, even if negative, can encourage open conversation that builds trust, unlike surface politeness that barely conceals closed judgments.
With the rise of machine learning and machine interaction, along with increased remote work, “creative overlapping” may encourage what a seminal and prescient 1999 Harvard Business Review article termed “the human moment at work” – an activity vital to workplace social fabric and worker mental health.
But writing daily in a commonplace book was a labour-intensive activity. Webster worked arduously to soar on borrowed plumes, and it took genius for him to synthesize his imitations and borrowings into sublime plays like The Duchess of Malfi.
For us, it takes seconds to soar on borrowed words with the aid of the internet and other technical devices. However, technology such as ChatGPT is incapable of achieving, let alone maintaining, the sublime in the old sense.
No bot shall resuscitate the dead art of poetry.
Greig HendersonToronto
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here:letters@globeandmail.com
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
:format(jpeg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/CTA74K7M7NMZNDV55Z5E6PDQGI.JPG)
