1. IT WAS NOT A MISTAKE: IT WAS A SCHEME

Many people thing the economy is in free fall because some businesses made mistakes or because “everyone’s to blame.” Irresponsible borrowers are being equated with irresponsible lenders. Republicans are blaming Democrats, and vice versa. What the blame game misses is that this was at the heart of the collapse of the housing market that started the financial avalanche was a scheme and scam called Predatory Lending, often racially discriminatory and unscrupulous practices.

How do we know? The FBI tells us so as they open 2400 cases, say that crime is pervasive, open 1400 cases, indicted 400 people in the mortgage industry and announce a criminal investigation of 26 top companies. This is just the beginning. Even Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve blames fraud and corruption. Remember Franklin D Roosevelt’s word for the folks behind the depression? He called them “banksters”

That’s why I say we need a “jailout,” not a bailout.

2. WALL STREET “SUCTION” COMPOUNDED THE CRIME

It was Wall Street firms that figured out how make real money on the peddling of subprime mortgages. The idea: get as many as people on the hook for cheap mortgages with no documentation so we can securitize them, by slicing them into investment pools and selling them worldwide as “asset backed securities.” They pushed the brokers at the bottom to cut corners and get them more paper so they could turn straw into gold/ The problem: often there were no assets backing up asset-backed securities. The result, investors in other countries were defrauded and banks were forced to write down BILLIONS. This led to a lack of confidence and the credit crisis. Business writer Dean Starkman summed it up with one word: CORRUPTON. The same institutions were hiring lobbyists and making political donations to make sure they got their way. Corrupt themselves, they corrupted the political system further.

3. THE REGULATORS WERE NOT REGULATING

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission admits that his agency did not do its job and regulate. Why? Because this administration didn’t believe in regulation and supported all sorts of measures to let the “free market” do its thing. In addition, slick operators created a “shadow banking system” which was totally unregulated. The result, no one was watching the store or worrying about risk. Soon the law of karma went into effect — what went around came around. The Banks got what they wanted and now they don’t want it. Now they say, please bail us out.

4. THE MEDIA MISSED THE STORY

Where was the media exposing the this problem before it became a crisis, before three and half million families were forced into foreclosure, before the Congress passed a 700 BILLION dollar bailout that everyone in the know expects will go higher. The subprime lending book started after the http://dot.com boom went bust back in 2002. The market for these securities melted down in 2007. In that period, five years there were very few investigations perhaps because at this time, lenders and credit card companies spent $3 Billion advertising in the media. We need to investigate the Investigators.

5. WHERE WAS THE PUBLIC?

We can blame the kleptocrats on Wall Street and the compromised politicians, some of whom were sent to jail. We can even express our frustration with a media that barely covered the story when it might have done some good, and when they did cover tended to glorify high paying CEOs while not reporting on mounting economic inequality… But what about us, the people? Why were we in denial and not pressing our politicians to act in our interest?

One reason may be that we live in a charge-it society where we are constantly being told to shop until we drop. Many of us don’t really understand high interest, especially about how it compounds. So many of us are in debt and obsessed with personal economic problems that make it hard to have the time to relate to a larger economic debate. Yet, it seems clear that we all need to understand these issues more clearly, and base our opinions on real information.

I am not an economic “expert” but I pushed myself to investigate our economic calamity. My findings appear in the book PLUNDER (Cosimo) My hope is that readers will find it of value and get into the conversation. If I can learn about these problems and the need for change, so can you.

Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel. He was an Emmy Award winning producer for ABC News, director of the film In Debt We Trust and author of the new book: PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity.

According to a Senate report, the starting point of this crisis was in 1997, during the reign of the Clinton Administration. It was then that a period of housing price appreciation began – increasing by nearly 85% until 2006. Home prices jumped by 124%. This was unusual, having occurred only once before in American history, right after World War II.

Soon the housing sector was driving the American economy. Within the next few years, seven million families bought homes with subprime loans.

Homeowners who may have been cash poor, became house rich, by dipping into inflating home equity either by refinancing or taking out low-cost equity loans. As this business boomed, underwriting standards began to “deteriorate.” The banks and other lenders had found a new way to make money – and fast. These loans helped homeowners stave off foreclosures.

They were made possible by deregulation lobbied for by financial institutions, credit card companies, and homebuilders, the industries most likely to benefit.

As John Atlas and Peter Dreier explain in the American Prospect, they won support from the Democrats and Republicans under the cover of the “Reagan Revolution” to undercut reforms made in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, when community groups discovered that lenders and the FHA were engaged in systematic racial discrimination against minority consumers and neighborhoods – a practice called “redlining” – they mobilized and got Congress, led by Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, to adopt the Community Reinvestment Act and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which together have significantly reduced racial disparities in lending. But by the early 1980s, the lending industry used its political clout to push back against government regulation.

This was also the period of major bank consolidation through mergers and the S&L crisis, which saw the closures of scores of banks and major losses because of illegal practices including mortgage lending.

A few bankers were prosecuted but most were bailed out by the Congress. As a blog named the Last Hurrah explained: “Without understanding cause, or the reason for these plain Jane savings organizations in sustaining middle and working class home ownership – Congress just bailed out the lenders who had the wit to reorganize, and let it go at that. Essentially they financed the next bump in housing inflation, whether it be in inflated prices for existing homes, speculation in lots for tear-downs in good areas, or McMansion housing far from jobs and culture in the exurbs, that requires vast investment in infrastructure on the part of existing home owners and the states.”

Interest rate ceilings imposed by state usury laws dating from “reforms” in the 1980s were then rolled back. The lenders understood that these changes meant that now they could target a large potential market who wanted home ownership but could not qualify. And they could charge them high fees and interest.

The subprime loan was crafted for this community and promoted as a reform, a positive way for minorities to become part of the American Dream of homeownership for all. In this period, the Bush administration was hyping the promise of the “ownership society.”

(Now, given the foreclosure rate, ownership may actually decline under his “watch.”)

Most subprime borrowers were sold loans called “2/28” and “3/27” hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). These loans typically had a low fixed interest rate – called a “teaser rate “by the industry – but

only applicable during the first two-year period. After two years, the rate is reset every six months based on an interest-rate benchmark. In many cases, payments rose 30%, which made them un-affordable to people whose wages and income were barely rising. By 2004, 90 percent of the subprime loans had these ARMs.

Bear in mind also that the most vulnerable and hence “higher risk” subprime borrowers – many with low FICO credit scores and poor credit histories – were charged substantially higher interest rates and fees than other borrowers. They were more likely to be subject to prepayment penalties, which make it costly to refinance loans. It was known in the industry that these are the borrowers who are most likely

to default or become delinquent in payments and face foreclosure.

No one can fully explain why housing prices went up so quickly either, leaving the door open to explanations based on deceptive and fraudulent practices such as inflated appraisals.

Quickly, so-called “intermediaries,” unregulated and often unscrupulous mortgage brokers, hustled their way into the housing market and quickly dominated, taking a vast market share by a variety of tactics ranging from deceptive advertising to block-by-block solicitations to get people to buy and sell, always promising more than they can deliver.

These efforts were buttressed by large-scale advertising campaigns for firms like DiTech – which used an actor/comedian known for his appearances on Saturday Night Live – to hype the mortgages being backed by the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. (For a while the car company was making more on loans than selling automobiles.) Online lenders then joined the carnival of competition with more ads. Media companies raked in several billion from this advertising, which provided little incentive to expose these practices.

Speculators fielded street teams known as “birddogs,” rewarded for hunting down and signing up prospects. Abusive, illegal, and predatory practices were common. They enticed. They seduced, and in some cases, they threatened. I was told by a mortgage professional in the know that muscle was used, and that people were murdered in property battles.

According to the Joint Economic Report, “For 2006, Inside Mortgage Finance estimates that 63.3 percent of all subprime originations came through brokers, with 19.4 percent coming through retail channels, and the remaining 17.4 percent through correspondent lenders. Their data show the broker share increasing from 2003 through 2006.”

These companies were not regulated and did not come under safety and soundness regulations. The percentage of subprime mortgage securitized rose rapidly after 2001, reaching a peak value of more than 81 percent in 2005.

Underscore that: 81%!

As housing sales boomed, lenders just dumped their traditional criteria for originating loans. The Senate later found: “The share of loans originated for borrowers unable to verify information about employment, income or other credit-related information (‘low-documentation’ or ‘no documentation’ loans) jumped from more than 28 percent to more than 50 percent. The share of ARM originations on which borrowers paid interest only, with nothing going to repay principal, increased from zero to more than 22 percent. Over this period the share of subprime ARMs multiplied dramatically that were originated.”

Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel. He was an Emmy Award winning producer for ABC News, director of the film In Debt We Trust and author of the new book: PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity.

Understanding stocks and shares is not a difficult job if you don’t get too overly technical and just look for the stock market basics. Stocks are nothing more than purchasing a little piece of a business. When owners of a business need to raise money, they have several options. The first is the normal one, borrow money from a lending institution. The second one is to issue bonds. A bond pays a specific interest rate to those that purchase them. There’s a date when it comes due and the company pays the loan in full. The third option is to go public with stock.

When a company goes public, it issues stock. The company creates a specific amount of shares, we’ll keep it simple and use the number 1,000,000. Everyone that buys a share of stock from the company when they do the initial public offering (IPO) just purchased 1/1,000,000 of the company. Even though it sells many shares, it keeps some stock back for itself. Understanding stocks and shares is a matter of knowing that a single stock is one share of all those that the company issued.

Understanding stocks and shares also involves their purchase and sale. You can buy shares directly through many companies on a systematic basis. This saves brokerage fees. If you sell shares, you also can do that through the company direct. The problem when you do both is that you never know what price you’ll get until the close of the stock market since share trading doesn’t take place until then when you go direct.

Most people get involved in trading stock as a form of investing and want to make the maximum return on their money. You need a brokerage account to do that. You don’t need a broker if you have some understanding of stocks and shares. To provide you with that information, here’s a some stock market for beginners basics.

1. Select the stock you want to purchase. After you open a brokerage account, get a basic understanding of the type of stock, and shares you want, be on the look out for three or four companies you know and whose products you really like.

2. Check the background of the companies and their management. Read every article you can.

3. Find the symbol of the companies and track the stock. You’ll probably start to see a pattern after a few weeks.

4. Decide the type of investor you want to become. It’s not enough to simply have an understanding of stocks and shares, you need to know how you’re going to invest. Decide whether you want to buy and hold. This type of investing comes when you believe that over time, the company will grow. You can also buy and trade rapidly. This is day trading and is used to make money on the patterns of price fluctuations.

Understanding stocks and shares is time consuming at first if you jump in with both feet, but once you follow stocks for a few weeks, you’ll start to see how simple it really is.

If you want to be rich then the easiest way to achieve this goal is to become an investor. SharesPropertyMoney.com is giving away a Free Jamie McIntyre Investment DVD ‘Understanding Stocks And Shares’- Get your Free Copy before they run out. Learn an amazing Investment Strategy that everyday people are using to earn $4000 per month from 5 minutes of work.

Whole life insurance may be a good choice if you have extended future goals. Whole life generally offers level premiums and the accumulation of cash values. The guaranteed cash values may also provide you with money in the future to help with temporary needs.

Do you need life insurance coverage?

You may consider purchasing life insurance:

* If you become a parent.

* If your family does not have a lot of money saved.

* If you are a stay-at-home parent.

* To cover the mortgage or other large shared financial commitments.

The different types of whole life insurance policies you may choose from.

To help you choose the best whole life insurance, you may first need to know more about the different types of whole life policies you can choose from.

Level Premium Whole Life Insurance:

This whole life policy features premium payments that are:

* level.

* are required to be paid as long as the insured is alive.

In the early years the premium is more than enough to pay the current cost of insurance security. The surplus makes up the insufficiency of premiums in later years when the annual premium is not sufficient to pay the yearly cost of insurance. These extra premiums are held and invested by the insurer. This creates the cash value of the policy.

Indeterminate Premium Whole Life Insurance:

This type of whole life policy is similar to an ordinary whole life policy save for it providing adjustable premiums. The company will charge a premium based on its current estimate of expenditure, investment income and mortality. The company will adjust the premium in view of these estimates changing in later years. It will never be adjusted above the maximum guaranteed premium declared in the policy contract.

Single Premium Whole Life Insurance:

Single premium whole life is a limited payment whole life insurance policy with one quite large premium payment payable at issue. The policy is fully paid up and no further premiums are necessary. Owing to the single premium payment the policy will have an immediate cash and loan value. This could be considerable depending on the sum of the single premium payment.

Limited Payment Whole Life Insurance:

This whole life policy gives you life insurance protection but involves only a limited number of premium payments. The premium payments will be higher than with an ordinary whole life policy since the premiums are paid over a shorter timespan. Limited payment plans can provide for the payment of premiums for a set number of years such as 20 payment whole life insurance.

Participating Whole Life Insurance:

This whole life policy pays dividends corresponding to:

* the positive experience of the company.

* results from surplus investment earnings.

* favorable mortality.

The dividends may be:

* paid in cash.

* used to decrease your premium expenses.

* left to build up at a particular rate of interest.

* used to buy paid-up supplementary insurance.

Non-Participating Whole Life Insurance:

A non-participating whole life policy has a level premium and a fixed insured amount during your entire life. However, this policy does not pay out any dividends.

You may contact your insurance broker or a life insurance company for more information about the best whole life insurance for your personal life insurance needs.

Copyright - Gert Hough. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active.
Life insurance Coverage Lawyer Free Whole Term Life Insurance Quotes Online

1. Shop, shop and shop again – the main thing people forget to do is to shop around. The one thing to do if you do nothing else is to call a few insurance companies and get a few car insurance quotes. Surprisingly to some, the quotes can change by hundreds of pounds.

2. Take out more than one insurance policy – a lot of insurance companies now provide insurances for a variety of covers. Not only car insurance, but home insurance, contents insurance, life insurance, pet insurance – every type of insurance you can think of can generally be bought in the same place. Whilst it may not seem the cheapest quote around for each individual quote, buying them together can provide you with a significant discount.

3. Increase your excess – for younger drivers, this is often their first port of call when reducing their insurance premium. It’s often difficult enough to actually get car insurance when you’ve just passed your test, never mind getting a reduced premium. So the answer? Increase your own personal excess. All insurance companies ask for a set excess. However, most will also ask if you would like to contribute a voluntary excess also. This voluntary excess being what you would pay in the event of an accident on top of the standard excess. Of course, it works out more expensive should you have an accident, but if you don’t claim on your insurance, then you could save yourself a packet.

4. Don’t get into trouble – criminal convictions, whether they are vehicle related or not, will increase your car insurance premiums. And the bad news is they stay on your record for five years. So for example, you hit a bad patch when you were 18 and committed burglary, stealing a television from your next door neighbours. They pressed charges and you did a few hours community service. It hit you and you never did anything criminal again. However, you’re still going to be feeling the repercussions on your car insurance when you’re well into your 20’s.

5. Be a safe driver – the most sensible but most overlooked thing to do is simply be a safe driver. Driving within the speed limits, with a full MOT and tax will ensure you don’t attract any unwanted attention and receive a fine and points on your license. The more points you receive on your license – and remember, you can receive 3 points and a £60 fine even if you’re driving at 34mph in a 30mph zone – the higher your insurance premiums will be. And don’t forget, 12 points on your license and you need to take your theory and practical tests again (this is reduced to 6 points in your first 2 years of driving).

There are several different measures you can take to reduce your car insurance premiums. The above are the top five, but there are many more to choose from – just remember, be a safe driver and think before you buy and you should be on the right road to lower car insurance premiums.

Motor Direct is an established UK insurance company providing car insurance with low affordable premiums for your financial convenience.

Numerous people had bad experiences in the past years that resulted in job losses or even foreclosures. This can be a grave problem for many people because these kinds of situations that happened in the past can affect the credit report that are essential for these individuals in the present. The importance of these good credit reports come handy in the present more than ever since more employers are checking these reports as part of an individual’s application process. This puts the responsible personality of the person in question through the evidence on bill payments and the punctuality the payments are made. The credit repair service available is of great importance now more than ever!

Because of the impact of bad credit on the lives of people nowadays, getting the credit repair service is an only option left for many to undertake. However, before getting your credit record repaired, it will be important as well to consider learning more about how this can work for you. It will be a big help to know what things can be done on your present credit scores as well as the unrealistic promises from scammers.

Any credit repair service has the purpose of cleaning your credit record. However, there is no possible way of entirely deleting an entire credit record. You must remember this to avoid being scammed by a service that would say they can erase your bad credit. The only thing that the credit repair service can do is to make your credit report more satisfactory to those who might check your record for employment, loan applications, and for many other purposes that you might need in the present. With a better credit record, you will get a better judgment from those who might check you out through your credit record and scores.

Credit repair service finds the inaccuracy that most reports have. There are really many errors in your credit report that add up into your negative evaluation. Your credit report would look better and be more acceptable by getting these inaccurate records out of your record. Doing the clearing of your credit records would take much of your time and this is where the service steps on the way, they can do it faster with the better contacts that they have such as their contact with the major credit bureaus.

If you are planning on getting a new home, a new job or even a loan, you need to furnish a copy of your credit reports from any of the following: Equifax, Experian or Trans-Union. Check your own record and see if you have two or more inaccurate reports in your credit report that are usually resulting to an unacceptable credit report score.

It can be the right time for you to get a credit repair service to help you with your report. Get those errors off and update those reports to not really a perfect report but a better one that can get you approved in your present application. Be able to grab those opportunities in front of you by getting a cleaned credit report for yourself now!

Get to know the right time to get your credit counseling now. The author is a finance and credit expert who enjoys helping and teaching people to fix, manage and maintain their finances. He will answer your questions here Your finance does not need to be a burden because someone is there to help you.

Why do some people always make money while others lose? What do you need to do to make your portfolio successful over time? It helps if you have self-efficacy or the unshakable belief in knowing that you have what it takes to succeed whether or not you have the right skills. Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura first described this behavior in the 1970s. Persistent effort, too, can help you as well as these 5 tips to successful investing:

1. Create an environment for success. For example, you can’t build a portfolio of investments if you have no tools to track your performance and asset allocation. There are lots of free and low cost web tools to help you track what you bought, how much it cost, and the average annual return you are getting. Get the right information, software, web tools, etc. to help you organize all of your accounts –cash, pensions, and brokerage accounts.

2. Have good role models. You can’t do it alone so make sure you have the support of significant others, successful mentors, or a coach. A good investment plan starts with a clear vision of why you are buying in the first place and what conditions would have to happen for you to sell.

I want to make money– isn’t an investment plan. I want to retire in 20 years with $40,000 annual income coming from investment and pension accounts– is.

3. Avoid self limiting beliefs. If you lose money don’t assume that you will never be able to make money again. Successful people have had many failures. Keep investing and adding money to your portfolio anyway-learn from your mistakes and move forward.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that there are good times and bad times to invest. It is always a good time to invest because the alternative—doing nothing leads to a guaranteed loss due to taxes and inflation.

4. Don’t allow losses to derail your dreams. Keep your eye on the target you set. For example, I want x amount of money in x years. Know that during those years not everything is going to be going up at the same time- and that’s a good thing. Diversification is an easy proven money making long term strategy. Diversify over asset classes (large-cap, mid-cap, small cap, international, etc.) and asset styles (growth, value, balanced, etc.)

5. Believe in yourself and your portfolio. If you have a retirement plan strategy that is not on target, ask yourself if something fundamentally has changed. If not, leave it alone. Believe that you did the right thing to begin with and believe in your plan to see it through.

With determination you can model the behavior of those that are successful. With the right support system and tools, you can develop the optimism that’s needed to recover from failures, and market downturns. Follow these 5 tips and you will stop losing money and become the successful investor that you want to be.

2008

Forex AutoCash Robot is an automated Forex trading software system. Let’s dig a little deeper and see what this Forex trading software is all about.

Before we get started I’d like to tell you that this isn’t going to be another one of those, “this Forex trading system is the greatest thing since sliced bread” reviews. If you look around you’ll find out that those are a dime a dozen and are typically written by people that don’t have a clue about what real-time, real-life, in the trenches trading is all about. With that said, let’s jump straight into my review.

Right off the bat I can tell you this…the claims that this product makes are some of the boldest I have ever seen in any Forex trading software. For instance when is the last time you heard a Forex trading system that has never had a losing trade? Not only that but when the last time you heard of a trading system that is never had a losing trade in the last 8 years?

The claims don’t stop there… there is a video in the sales literature that mentions that you could use the system without any experience and without any risk. You and I both know that there is no such thing as potential reward without potential risk. Perhaps the creators were talking about trading in a demo account because trading in a real money account always, and I mean always, has risk associated with it.

By taking a closer look at Forex AutoCash Robot I did see that it had a trade-by-trade track record being shown. I like to see a track record when evaluating any Forex trading system as this definitely gives me a feel for how that system has performed. After carefully looking over all 597 trades in the track record it appeared to me that for all the 597 profitable trades shown that the profit was very small.

In my personal experience whenever I have seen a large number of consecutive profits it typically meant that the trading system has set a very small profit target in order to accumulate many consecutive profitable trades. While this looks impressive on paper and in some hypothetical back tests, in real-life trading I believe the results would be very, very different.

It is this reviewer’s humble opinion that the odds of you or I ever attaining 100% winning trades with Forex AutoCash Robot in real time, real money trading is slim to none.

I know that some people will read what I said and think that I’m just some super-critical guy who looks for every opportunity to shoot down what others think are extremely exciting Forex trading systems. I can assure you that this is not the case at all and that when I see something that really, in my humble opinion, looks like it could make you money over the long haul I will be more than thrilled to tell you so.

With all that being said, you are, of course, more than welcome to take Forex AutoCash Robot out for a risk-free test drive. As with most products I review this product also comes with a 100% money back guarantee. Should you decide to you can very easily use this trading software with a free demo Forex trading account and not risk one thin dime while evaluating Forex AutoCash Robot to your satisfaction.

There’s more Forex trading system review information at http://www.NewForexReview.com

When searching for property in Canada’s cottage country, researching the area and pre-arranging your mortgage financing can give you a real leg up on the competition.

According to the 2008 Royal LePage Recreational Property Report, the competition is out there and they are serious about it.

The survey found that 61% of cottage owners and those who plan to buy a recreational property feel that buying a cottage is a better long-term investment than buying stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Young investors are also becoming more savvy. Nineteen percent of young professionals said that they are currently planning or considering a cottage purchase.

Once you’ve committed to joining the ranks of those searching for that little piece of heaven, come back down to earth long enough to consider some factors that are key to making a good decision:

• Why? Answering this question will often provide answers to other key questions. If, for example, you want friends and family to visit, the size of the cottage will have to accommodate that goal. Will zoning laws let you add on to an existing cottage if need be? How will taxes be affected?

• Where? How far are you willing to drive each weekend? Do you want a deep lake for your boating activities, or a secluded spot on a remote lake to use as an escape? Are you willing to make compromises in location to achieve your goal?

• Can you access the property in the winter? This could be a stipulation with financing and insurance.

• Do you intend to use renters to offset the cost of the mortgage? This can affect your financing and insurance.

• Most importantly, cost. How do you intend to finance the property?

If you finally find that perfect place on the lake but leave the financing to be worked out later, someone else armed with a pre-approved mortgage can be sitting by the fire beside your lake next summer – all because they did their research.

Financing a recreational property can be subject to more stringent conditions than a primary property, mainly due to the perceived risk involved. This is something that needs to be discussed with your financial advisor as conditions can be unique to the type and location of your property. In addition, if you decide to obtain mortgage financing for over 75% of the price of the property you will require the use of either CMHC or Genworth for mortgage insurance. Home insurance companies also vary in their requirements when it comes to insuring second homes. Having this knowledge in your pocket before you begin your search can help ease the way to a smoother purchase.

With Canada’s retail banks tightening their belts in response to the recent US crisis, obtaining a mortgage for a second property from a conventional lender could become much more difficult. However, with the existence of knowledgeable, alternative lenders like certified mortgage brokers, buyers shouldn’t be deterred from taking advantage of the excellent mortgage rates, and increased supply of recreational properties.

For more information on mortgaging your cottage contact our mortgage centre at www.canadianmortgagesinc.ca

Unless you are a member of Canada’s privileged few, one of the initial steps on the road to becoming a mortgage free homeowner is obtaining a mortgage in the first place. And for those finding it increasingly harder to justify the recent returns on their investments, or their monthly rent cheque, now just may be the time to do so.

In the Greater Toronto Area, listings were up by 26% for the first half of September. However, sales for the same area were down by 16% compared to last year at this time. The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) further reports that not only were there more houses on the market, but that potential buyers had more time to shop; up to 37 days from just 31 days a year ago. Could this mean the beginning of the end for ‘above list offers’ and bidding wars? It seems very likely.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reports that the current gap between listings and sales is expected to continue to widen through the end of 2009. This means that potential home buyers will have significantly more choice in the marketplace and that sellers will have to learn to be patient.

In addition, the increased number of sellers vying for the buyer’s nod of approval is also expected to keep prices in check. In fact, TREB reports that September’s price for an average home in the GTA was $366,158, up just $1,794 from 2007. This moderate price growth is expected through 2009 when CMHC predicts housing prices will align closely with inflation, putting the price of an average home in the GTA at $404,000. The prediction of pricing stability is good news for those seeking mortgage pre-approval.

For those opting for a smaller mortgage or less expensive housing, the apartment condominium market will be worth watching. As building projects wrap up, the CMHC foresees that some investors may begin to sell off their units. It is argued that in the GTA investors represent anywhere from 21% to 33% of the apartment condo market. A release of this number of properties onto the market is expected to affect the value of condominiums. Though significant reductions are not foreseen, market price adjustments are expected to veer well away from the 10+% increases buyers experienced in 2007.

For those who have determined that they are ready to take advantage of the current relaxed market conditions, it is comforting to know that the more flexible mortgage products developed over the last couple of years have helped to personalize mortgage payment options. Be sure to shop around. A certified mortgage broker has access to products and rates from different lenders. That can be a good place to start.

For those less confident that housing is the right investment option for them, TREB President, Maureen O’Neill reports that the state of the current market shows that, “…consumers still regard real estate as a sound investment”. This is very good news for those already committed to Canadian home ownership.

For more information on Canadian Mortgages contact a Toronto Mortgage Broker at http://www.canadianmortgagesinc.ca/mortgage_brokers/