More Good News for the Oakville Real Estate Market

June 26th, 2012, Oakville, Ontario

With the Toronto, Oakville and GTA real estate market warming up heading into summer, the Canadian real estate association announced last Friday that home prices across the country have risen by 5.2% compared to the same time last year.   These increases bode well for the already strong Oakville real estate market.

The actual increase in the Toronto market was almost 8%, which was the largest increase anywhere across the country.  The major increases in Toronto where once again single family dwelling in the urban core of the city.  Calgary was second with a rise of nearly 5% and Vancouver saw an increase of approx. 3.3%.

With home prices in Toronto, Oakville and the rest of the GTA outpacing the rest of the country by a large margin, this has led the federal government to put new mortgage lending rules in place, for the 4th time in 4 years.  The largest of these changes is tightening the maximum amortization period of mortgages insured by the government to 25 years from 30 years, and decreasing the amount home owners can borrow form the value of their real estate by 5% to 80% from the previous 85%.  The reason given by Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister, for these changes, is the booming condominium market in Toronto and the GTA. 

With these changes in place, many analysts now believe the odds are now in favour of a soft landing, rather than a hard one, once interest rates eventually begin to rise and household debt increases along with it.

Although Canadian interest rates are expected to remain low through 2012, possibly increasing by a quarter of a percentage point by the end of the year, most analysts believe that interest rates will hold steady throughout this year and into 2013.  With the Canadian retail market seeing slower sales in recent months, the unstable economic situation that is ongoing in Europe and a faltering United States economic recovery, most experts feel that now is not the time to raise the Bank of Canada’s key lending rate above its current record low of 1%.  This is, once again, good news for anyone looking to buy or sell homes for sale in Oakville.

The Goodale Miller Team, based in Oakville, Ontario is Canada’s #1 Century 21 team for 8 years running.

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Mike Smith

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The Goodale Miller Team

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