Garry Marr, Financial Post Are the banks doing an incredible job of retaining customers or are Canadians just too lazy to shop around when renewing their mortgages? One finding of a survey by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. released this week was that 89% of consumers renewing their mortgage stay with the same financial institution. […]

SHELLEY WHITE There was a time when no one wanted to end up in Toronto’s Liberty Village. More than a century before the name was coined, the area between King Street West and the Gardiner Expressway (bordered by Dufferin Street to the west and Strachan Avenue to the east) was home to a men’s prison […]

GRANT ROBERTSON — BANKING REPORTER Canada’s banks are locked in a war of attrition this summer, grinding down mortgage rates and competing more fiercely for personal loans in an effort to steal customers from each other. Stuck in a market where the Canadian consumer is already highly leveraged and more concerned with paying down existing debt, […]

Canada’s housing market is in a bubble that’s set to burst and prices could plunge by as much as 25 per cent, a major independent research firm warns. “Housing valuations have lost all touch with fundamentals and household debt is at a record high,” economists at the research consultancy Capital Economics say in their most […]

Bloomberg News Central banks need to start raising interest rates to control inflation and may have to act faster than in the past, the Bank for International Settlements said. “Tighter global monetary policy is needed in order to contain inflation pressures and ward off financial stability risks,” the BIS said in its annual report published […]

By Christopher S. Rugaber,Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press WASHINGTON – Farewell and good riddance to the first half of 2011 — six months that are ending as sour for the economy as they began. Most analysts say economic growth will perk up in the second half of the year. The reason is that the main […]

By Julian Beltrame, The Canadian Press OTTAWA – Strain from a world awash in debt is increasing the risk to what is already a fragile and weak economic recovery, the Bank of Canada warns. And Canada faces a second, more immediate challenge from temporary factors such as disruptions from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that […]

Stephan Abraham During the first half of the 2000s, investing in real estate became more common for average Americans. With easily available financing and minimal down payment requirements many Americans made handsome profits by flipping homes. Well, as we are all aware of, this couldn’t go on forever, and the real estate bubble popped in […]

 Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Monday he continues to monitor the country’s housing market, which has some “hot spots”, but said the situation remained stable. “We have seen some moderation in the housing market in Canada,” Flaherty told reporters after a speech in Toronto. “There are a couple of hot spots in the […]

By Julian Beltrame Canada will continue to outperform most economically advanced countries over the next two years, even as the pace slows and risks mount, the IMF says. The International Monetary Fund’s latest forecast presents Canada as a relative sea of tranquility amid rising global turbulence from European and U.S. debt issues, the aftermath of […]