

Canada’s Marvelous Mortgage and Banking System? - cwan
http://american.com/archive/2010/february/due-north-canadas-marvelous-mortgage-and-banking-system

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guelo
It is funny, though not surprising considering it comes from a right-wing
think tank, that this article doesn't mention that Canadian banks are much
more regulated wrt what they’re allowed to do with their money and higher
capital requirements. The investment banking side of the business is much
smaller relatively in Canada. The problem in the U.S. isn’t the retail banks;
the problem is the big investment banks on Wall Street.

The Canadian capital markets don’t amount to very much, and mortgage
securitization was pointless because the big five banks hold all the mortgages
anyways.

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Maciek416
After the crazy dire news events of the last year or two, I was quite
surprised by my experience in selling + buying last summer in Toronto's
market.

We listed our condo early on a Friday afternoon, and were inundated with
offers and interest that same day. We had a buyer over-asking within the same
day, and it was all done in under 24 hours. I asked my agent about this, and
she said that it was typical of the activity at that time. The market was
surprisingly hot. We had no problems with the bank, in spite of reading about
a widespread slowdown in lending.

I'm not the only one in my social circle to have bought/sold/gotten loans last
year, and I've never been sure whether this has been a product of lucky
demographics (mostly technical people) or whether Toronto has largely
weathered the storm.

Can any other Canadian HNers throw in a data point here?

~~~
sunir
The story of the Toronto real estate market is well described on
<http://guava.ca>.

I was lucky to buy in January, 2009, when the prices had hit the bottom. They
have gone up 10% since 2008 already.

Non-Canadians reading those stats should note that most Canadians don't buy in
the winter for two reasons:

a) don't want to move in the middle of a school year b) too lazy to head out
in the snow and slush

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nkassis
Please don't, Canadian banks might be safe for those investing in them but
they are horrible to customers. Customer service in Canadian banks is non-
existent. Having lived in Florida (from Quebec) for half a decade, I seriously
prefer the small banks in Florida. Local banks don't exist in Canada so the
big ones can get away with being open 4 hours a day, charging terrible fees,
and more crappy practices that are due to lack of competition

~~~
jbm
Ditto.

I also have to ask, how many of the list of items are customer friendly, or
low-income friendly? Can't pre-pay earlier? A few oligopolist banks that are
all-powerful? Public housing instead of the opportunity to buy? Bank re-
negotiates the interest rate every 5 years?

Dealing with Canadian banks is quite irritating because they always have the
upper hand on you. No 10k in the bank? Then that US$ check that you just
received is going to take a month to clear. (This is in the information age!)

~~~
heresy
Wow, who still uses checks?

Maybe I'm spoiled, because here in NZ it's pretty uncommon to use cash,
everything is EFT or online transfer.

I've not seen a check once since I came here.

At most I carry $0-50 on me at any time.

Also, transferring funds internationally between bank accounts (not credit
card) is usually instant, or at most 1 day, depending on the settlement window
of your bank compared to originating bank.

Checks seem so...80s?

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frankus
First off, that should be Marvellous, if we're talking about Canada :).

Secondly, in what bizarro universe does the AEI praise anti-deregulatory
Canadian policies? Cool nonetheless.

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bmunro
_Canada remains the only industrialized country in the world that has survived
the last two years of financial and economic stress without a single bank
failure._

Australia hasn't had a bank failure since the early 1990s

