Recently it has been brought to my attention that the city of Montreal is planning to install a bike path on Cote Ste Catherine. This certainly comes as news to me, as I actually live on Cote Ste Catherine!
The bike path that the city intends to create on Cote Ste Catherine will be dangerous to cyclists, drivers and pedestrians. While the idea of creating a bike path on Cote Ste Catherine may have some merit, and will certainly have supporters, the city must adjust it’s plan for the path, to …

Cote Ste Catherine is a long and winding street which half circles the mountain. It is dangerous for drivers since it curves quite a bit, and the lanes seem to expand and contract in width all along the street. Furthermore, in recent years it has become an absolute speed way. At night it is a main racetrack that downtown party-goers use to navigate around the city. During the day, it is a main thoroughfare used in the morning by groggy people driving to their downtown jobs, and in the afternoon …

(CEP News) Ottawa – The Canadian housing market slowed significantly in the first six months of 2008 compared to same period last year, according to figures released Thursday by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).The number of existing home sales in the first half of 2008 was down 13.1% compared to the same period last year, the CREA report showed, with a seasonally adjusted 181,716 houses sold through the multiple listing service (MLS) between January and June.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, dollar volume was valued at $36.0 billion in the …

By Jenny Wagler, National Post
New condos are still shooting up to crowd the Toronto skyline, but behind the scenes the condo boom times are ending, a new report predicts.
“We’re expecting a slowdown in 2009,” said Jane Renwick, editor and vice-president of Urbanation, a condominium market research company.
“So we would say that we were at 22,000 [condo] sales at the end of 2007. We’re predicting 16,000 sales to round out this year. And we’re expecting sales to dip beyond that in 2009.”
Urbanation released a report yesterday about the Toronto condo market’s …

Monday, August 18, 2008

The housing slowdown is hardly surprising: On one side we have the Canadian Real Estate Association telling us that the average price for a house sold in Canada is about $314,000 (www.crea.ca/public/news_stats/statistics.htm).
On the other hand we have Statistic Canada telling us that the average Canadian salary is $28,500.
It’s pretty simple to draw the conclusion that the real-estate market has priced itself out of budget for the average Canadian.
Michel Trahan
Verdun

By Dawn Desjardins
RBC Economics Research
Monday, August 10, 2008
Housing starts sank 13.6% in July to an annualized 186,500 units from a downwardly revised 215,900 in June (originally reported as 217,800). Expectations had been for a relatively modest 3.6% decline. However, the weakness was likely slightly overstated with the drop largely concentrated in Ontario, which contributed 30,300 units to the overall national decline in starts.
The drop in starts reflected weakness in both urban singles and multiple units, dropping 6.6% and 20.2%, respectively. The latter can be quite volatile month to month with …

As you can see from the above chart, the number of residential sales in 2008 has slowed dramatically. Sales were down 8% in January, down 7% in March, and down another 7% in May from the same periods in 2007. The other months only showed modest improvements over 2007, of about 3%. In total, year to date, sales are down 9% from 2007.
This data does not even include the current month of August which is on track to be the worst August sales month in years.
The fantastic Montreal real …