US and Canada Take Different Paths to Housing Recovery
In my blog reading this morning, I came across a post from Weichert Relocation Resources — Canadian Relocation Trends To Watch. While much of the article focused on issues closely related to the relocation industry, I was drawn to the first few paragraphs;
Although neighbors by geography, the United States and Canada are following vastly divergent paths to real estate market recovery.
In the US, it’s been a steady but slow crawl out from the housing slump. But in Canada, the rebound has been much more dramatic, with average home prices hitting record peaks in 2009 and the national average home sale price up to $328,537 in January 2010 from $274,711 a year ago, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. That’s good news for sellers, but some Canadian economists fear this expeditious bounce-back will lead to a real estate bubble similar to that felt in the States.
To stave off such concerns, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the Canadian government is considering making it tougher for people to get loans, and most recently tightened terms for government-issued mortgages.
So my question is: what did Canada do differently than the US during this economic debacle? Is it possible that American actions taken to “spur recovery” [in other words - spending like drunken sailors] served only to prolong the misery and delay an eventual recovery? If you know more about the “Canadian secret,” let us know in the comments
