0.25% – that’s where the benchmark interest rate will remain until next year the Bank of Canada reiterated again today.
“Conditional on the outlook for inflation, the target overnight rate can be expected to remain at its current level until the end of the second quarter of 2010,” Governor Mark Carney and his rate-setting panel said in the statement accompanying their decision. (Source)
Unfortunately, nowhere in the statement was any mention of the bubbling hot Canadian housing market although they are expected to comment on it in a review of financial system to be released on Thursday.
Zeroing in on the Calgary market for the 1st week of December, sales are higher than year ago levels (as is to be expected) but not quite up to the pace of the years before that.
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Both SFH & Condo prices are currently down from November but it’s too early to say where they’ll end up in December as the figures will continue to fluctuate until there are more sales recorded. We’ll have a better idea mid-month, but if pending numbers are any indication (96% SP/LP ratio) SFH will be down slightly with Condo prices dropping more so (Condo pending average is currently $289k — November month end: $294k)
SFH inventory continues to whittle away slowly and is down significantly from previous December month-ends.
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Bob Truman has rounded up the forecasts for 2009 – check out who predicted what and who was the most accurate here
I checked out Truman’s article. Definately some people thought the sky was falling, however I don’t think anyone could predict the drop of of Month end inventory for 2009 (June 2008: 6548 SFH’s vs. June 2009: 3395 SFH’s).
As for the market moving forward, only time will tell.