Flaherty Says He Isn’t Planning More Action to Cool Housing
Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he’s not planning further action to cool the country’s housing market.
Flaherty said that before acting, he would need to see “clear evidence of a bubble in the housing market in Canada, which we have not seen.” He defined that as “dramatic surges in prices in some part of the country.”
Flaherty, who was speaking to reporters in New York, tightened mortgage rules earlier this year amid a surge in household debt. He said those actions had led to “some softening in the Canadian housing market.”
Canadian house prices rose 1.3 percent in July, a gain of 5.3 percent from a year earlier, according to the Teranet- National Bank home price index published last week.
Flaherty noted there has been some “unusual” demand in some markets, citing Asian investors purchasing real estate in Vancouver.
To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Mead in New York at cmead11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net
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