IMF warns again about Canadian housing market

It’s not the first time that the International Monetary Fund has warned about the Canadian housing market but in its latest report it says that Ottawa has not done enough to cool the market.

It’s not the first time that the International Monetary Fund has warned about the Canadian housing market but in its latest report it says that Ottawa has not done enough to cool the market. While it is still calling for a soft landing for the market over the next few years it highlights a 60 per cent rise in home prices over the last 15 years and suggests that the market is between 7 and 20 per cent overvalued. The report also says that Canadian households have debt above that of most other western nations. The IMF also says that there needs to be more information about the state of the housing market and repeated its calls for the balance of risk to move to the private sector from the CMHC. Another issue that was cause for IMF concern was the conclusion that many buyers of expensive properties have borrowed to finance their downpayment and it urged regulators to start collecting accurate data on that. Read the full story.