Just for fun:

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Directory organized by subject, including Mortgages.

The Canadian Real Estate Association has officially given notice - put away your party hats and streamers - the real estate boom is over in Canada.

At least it was a good party, lasting 6 years. However, on a year over year sales volume basis, 16 of the 18 major markets declined, led by Calgary and Edmonton with 35.9% and 29.8% drops respectively.

Now just because the party decorations have been taken down, don't throw them away just yet. Spring is a critical season - and its really just getting into full swing. The sales volume we see in Spring will be the real indicator.

It was bound to happen. A major bank saying that they want to control a mortgage process that has churned up significant issues in the US.

BMO has decided to put more of a shift on bank-originated lending, rather than the mortgage broker channel. This is tough since "In theory, everyone wins with a mortgage broker: The customer receives a better deal, the bank a new customer and the broker a handsome fee."

Rob Carrick, a columnist at the Globe and Mail just wrote a great piece on Canadian mortgages. The article serves partly as a warning to mortgage consumers to be wary of cash-back offers, which are being aggressively marketed by lenders and mortgage brokers in Canada.

Carrick also astutely points out that "To negotiate effectively, you need to understand that there is a bigger gap than in the past between the fictional world of posted mortgage rates and the actual discounted rates that smart borrowers pay."

With so much awful news in the mortgage industry and the financial services sector, you start to wonder whether people are becoming decensitized to gigantic losses and underperformance. John Heinzl, a columnist for the Globe and Mail recently penned a great column assessing Wachovia - who recently slashed dividends and incurred gigantic losses... and investors "yawned", as Heinzl puts it.

As it turns out, Canada has a fan in Australia. According to Australian Business: "The federal Government is being urged to replicate a Canadian scheme to guarantee mortgage-backed securities, that its proponents say will ease the liquidity logjam and cut home mortgage rates."

Greg Medcraft, new Executive Director of Australian Securitization Forum cuts right to the point in saying "The biggest issue for the Government is to make sure that the people who should be getting mortgages get mortgages at the lowest rates possible."

Everyone seems to be thinking that green is the way to go - unless you want to save the economy. According to CIBC analyst Jeff Rubin, Canada's wealth of oil may in fact save the nation from falling into a similar plight as the US economy.

According to the report, Canada's energy and resources sectors are in fact withstanding the slowdown in spending south of the border.

The high price of oil has helped too - and many analysts see this rising even further - upwards of $150 per barrel.

For all the losers in the mortgage mess south of the border, at least someone is looking on the bright side - a Canadian Bank. According to Reuters, Bank of Montreal is starting to see some opportunities:

We believe with the current environment, there will be more opportunities at better prices than in the past and we are monitoring these very closely," said Ellen Costello, chief executive of Harris Bankcorp, BMO's U.S. retail bank.

Attention all Canadians - the credit crunch has arrived! How can we be sure? Well the Bank of Canada is certainly taking some dramatic actions - injecting 2 billion dollars into money markets and slashing interest rates by 50 basis points.

Why such drastic action? The Bank of Canada administers a quarterly survey and this time around there was a strong sentiment that businesses face tough terms and conditions for accessing capital - this is the third consecutive term in which this has been reported.

Mortgage application volume increased for the week ending APril 11th - by 2.5% This is good news for the struggling US mortgage industry Mortgage brokers and real estate agents alike have taken a rough beating in recent months. Nice to see them finally getting a breather with this positive news. Also positive is that mortgage refinance volume also increased - by a healthy 5.2%. With more mortgage applications and refinance applications, this is a positive sign.

Can the rally be sustained in the US? Wait and see.