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SNC-Lavalin: deux milliards en contrats dans l'Ouest 5 mai 2007 - 15h04 La Presse Martin Vallières Vancouver Pour la première fois, SNC-Lavalin tenait son assemblée d'actionnaires dans la métropole de la côte ouest canadienne. Et pour cause. La Colombie-Britannique et l'Alberta, en plein boom économique, pèsent au moins deux milliards dans le carnet de commandes de 10,4 milliards de SNC-Lavalin, a confirmé son président, Jacques Lamarre, à La Presse Affaires. Il y a bien sûr, en Alberta, plusieurs contrats reliés aux projets pétroliers et gaziers. Mais la province voisine est aussi en plein boom d'investissement. À preuve, les nombreux chantiers dans les environs immédiats de l'hôtel du centre-ville de Vancouver, où avait lieu l'assemblée de SNC-Lavalin. Et la firme montréalaise dirige même le plus gros et le plus compliqué de ces chantiers vancouverois. Il s'agit de la ligne de métro au centre-ville et de train aéroportuaire qui doit ouvrir quelques mois avant les Jeux olympiques d'hiver, en février 2010. SNC-Lavalin est le maître d'oeuvre de ce projet de 1,9 milliard, ainsi qu'un investisseur dans la société d'exploitation de la «Canada Line», pour un mandat de 30 ans. La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec est aussi impliquée. Ailleurs en Colombie-Britannique, SNC-Lavalin a un autre projet particulier d'ingénierie et de gestion. Il s'agit du remplacement du «pont autoroutier flottant» sur le lac Okanagan, à Kelowna. Ce projet d'un peu plus de 200 millions est dans une région de villégiature et d'agriculture en forte croissance, située au milieu des chaînes montagneuses entre Vancouver et Calgary.

Very interesting video of a rapidly expanding transport that few people are aware of. Lac-Mégantic was a wake-up call:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/What+that+mysterious+boom/9216575/story.html MONTREAL - What was that boom? What was that flash of light? And where were they coming from? Hudson, St-Lazare and towns farther afield were rocked briefly by the sound of an explosion and a flash of blue-green light in the night sky at around 8 p.m. Tuesday. But the source of the big boom remains a mystery. Officials in the off-island towns, as well as at the Sûreté du Québec, were flummoxed, leaving residents who heard the noise to wonder what happened. "No one seems to know what it is exactly, but a friend described it as bright blue flash in the sky followed by the sound," tweeted Kalina Laframboise. "It's been heard all over the region but no details," wrote Greg Patterson. "My opinion is that it was a meteor hitting the atmosphere with sonic boom." "Felt like an explosion, or a 'short' earthquake," Faith MacLeod said on Off Island Gazette's Facebook page. "Stepped outside and neighbours were out wondering what it was." "Yes, was sitting watching TV and I thought one of my kids fell out of bed. It was super loud," added Jenn Ryan Baluyot on the same Facebook page. Residents from Pincourt to Pointe-Claire and Pierrefonds reported hearing the sound. On social media, it was even reported as far away as Ormstown and Cornwall, Ont. St-Lazare mayor Robert Grimaudo said he had no idea what the source of the explosion was. Nor did the SQ, nor Environment Canada. Nothing in the weather patterns in the area could be to blame, least of all the snow that began to fall around the same time, an Environment Canada spokesperson said. Tracy Moore was at home in St-Lazare with her boyfriend and heard and felt something strange around 8 p.m. "It was really freaky — we heard this boom outside," she told The Gazette an hour later. "It sounded like that explosion we had last summer at the fireworks factory here. "It was just this boom. It lasted a few seconds." Moore went online to a local Facebook "community connections" group she's a member of, and wrote: "Did anybody hear the boom? Or was it just us?" "And, like, 211 posts later, people are still talking about it," she said. "People felt their house shaking and thought a tree had landed on it. The dogs were freaking out. My girlfriend in Cornwall, her husband works for Ontario Hydro and he saw this flash of light in the sky. "He says he never saw anything like it before — and he works for Hydro!" Did you hear anything? Let us know on Twitter @mtlgazette or by leaving a comment on this story. For more on this story visit the Montreal Gazette's Off Island site. © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

http://blog.buzzbuzzhome.com/2013/02/montreal-condo-market-optimism.html While the age-old rivalry between Toronto and Montreal has pitted the cities’ hockey teams and arts scenes against each other, there’s another set of bragging rights up for grabs. Which metropolis has the better condo market? Toronto may have mind-boggling number of new units coming on the market, but Montreal is no slouch when it comes to construction crane sightings. We previously reported on the flurry on new builds in Quebec’s largest city and now there are new numbers to make the case for the Montreal boom. Despite concerns about the market overheating, Property Biz Canada pinpointed some optimistic stats coming out of the Quebec Apartment Investment Conference: About 7,726 condo units will be delivered by 2016 in the downtown area, which includes Old Montreal, Griffintown and the Lachine Canal. Of those units, 64 per cent (or 4,658 suites) have already been sold or reserved, leaving 2,568 units left to be sold in the next four years (or 642 a year). According to Debbie Lafave, senior vice president of Baker Real Estate, investors make up 50 per cent of buyers of downtown Montreal condos, compared to the higher percentages suggested for Toronto. Some developers suggested that rental apartment buildings likely aren’t being built since rents in Montreal are too low and construction and land costs are too high to justify their construction. And condos are the most affordable means of entry-point into the Montreal market for first-time buyers. With a condo boom in Canada’s two largest cities, we can’t help but wonder: which city will see the steadiest gains and sales in the future?

07/08/2012 Mise à jour: 7 août 2012 | 15:11 Ajuster la taille du texte Le boom touristique montréalais décortiqué Le renouveau du tourisme montréalais analysé par deux de ses acteurs. Au début des années 1990, la ville faisait pâle figure sur la scène touristique. Le Biodôme et le Casino n’existaient pas et le Vieux-Port n’avait pas encore été réaménagé. Vingt-cinq ans plus tard, Montréal est méconnaissable. Le tourisme a bondi de 56% et la ville a connu le plus gros boom hôtelier de la décennie en Amérique du Nord avec 3000 chambres de plus (+16%). La ville figure désormais dans des dizaines de palmarès et concurrence des villes comme Barcelone et Berlin dans le créneau de ville relax et créative. Comment y est-on arrivé? «Tout a commencé en 1992 par les célébrations du 350e anniversaire de fondation de Montréal», indique Pierre Bellerose, porte-parole de Tourisme Montréal. Pour l’occasion les différents paliers de gouvernement ont mis la main à la poche. L’ancien vélodrome des Jeux olympiques de 1976 est devenu le Biodôme, le Vieux-Port s’est transformé en zone touristique et l’ancien pavillon de la France à l’Expo 67 est devenu le Casino de Montréal. Ces trois pôles d’attraction touristiques cumulent aujourd’hui à eux trois 13 millions de visiteurs par an, selon les données compilées par Tourisme Montréal. «Mais la grande réussite aura été de créer de nouveaux quartiers pour unifier le tout», ajoute M. Bellerose. Sur l’autoroute Ville-Marie en partie recouverte, le Quartier international a été créé. En plus d’accueillir de nouvelles tour à bureaux et le Palais des congrès et ses milliers de congressistes, le Quartier international permet de combler le no man’s land qui existait entre le Vieux-Montréal et le centre-ville. Le même travail est actuellement fait avec le Quartier des spectacles. L’Adresse symphonique, la place des Festivals et le 2.22 deviennent des pôles d’attraction pour les touristes, même si certains reprochent la trop grande place laissée au béton dans le concept de réaménagement. L’autre grande force de Montréal est d’avoir su suivre la voie de la diversification du tourisme. «Avant les touristes formait un bloc plutôt homogène pour ne pas dire monolithique; aujourd’hui c’est différent il faut faire du tourisme à la carte», illustre Ruby Roy, présidente du CA de l’Association professionnelle des guides touristiques de Montréal (APGT). Il y a 20 ans, Mme Roy était l’une des seules à faire des tours à vélo. Aujourd’hui, 15% des 150 membres de son association offrent une telle option. Montréal s’est aussi positionnée avec succès comme une destination gaie par excellence derrière San Francisco. Elle est en voie de faire de même du côté gastronomique et l’année 2012 s’annonce comme une année record pour le nombre de croisières jetant l’ancre à Montréal. L’apport de Bixi au tourisme doit aussi être souligné. «Grâce à BIXI, des secteurs moins bien desservis par le transport en commun, comme le canal Lachine, bénéficient d’un afflux de touristes», indique M. Bellerose. Selon les statistiques de l’organisme 8% des touristes ont utilisé le service en 2011. Les legs gouvernementaux liés au 375e anniversaire de Montréal en 2017 seront-ils aussi profitables? Le porte-parole de Tourisme Montréal n’en est pas sûr. «Je ne crois pas qu’on verra naître de nouvelles institutions, l’idée c’est plutôt de faire croître ce qu’on a déjà», dit-il. Parmi les mesures déjà annoncées, signalons la création d’une promenade le long du fleuve au niveau du parc Jean-Drapeau, la rénovation de la place des Nations et la mise en valeur des fondations de l’ancien parlement en aménageant un corridor souterrain à partir du musée Pointe-à-Callières dans un ancien égout pluvial. 5% d’insatisfaits Chaque année, Montréal compte 5% de visiteurs qui ne conseilleront absolument pas Montréal comme destination touristique. «Que ce soit des touristes venus visiter de la famille à Montréal ou des gens d’affaires, ils ont en commun de venir à Montréal par obligation et de ne pas aimer les grandes villes», indique M. Bellerose. La propreté, les embouteillages ou le fait de ne pas arriver à être accueilli en français dans certains commerces figurent parmi les principaux irritants. 32M$ C’est le budget annuel de Tourisme Montréal qui emploie 80 personnes. Les deux tiers de cette somme proviennent de la taxe de 3,5% sur les chambres d’hôtel. Des tours qui détonnent Quelques tours guidés qui sortent du lot. Avec un Montréalais. Des visites personnalisées données par des habitants d’ici. On est particulièrement intrigué par celle-ci : Jouer au golf avec un pro. Saveurs et arômes du Vieux-Montréal. Ou comment découvrir, en mangeant, que la culture amérindienne influence certains de nos plats. Tours guidés vélo et yoga de Fitz et Follwell. Pour les touristes granos qui s’assument. http://journalmetro.com/actualites/montreal/135379/le-boom-touristique-montrealais-decortique/

Boom ou bulle? 6 mai 2010 | 06h37 Nathalie Elgrably-Lévy Économiste sénior, Institut économique de Montréal Depuis quelques semaines, c’est la confusion. Face à la hausse fulgurante du prix des maisons, les Québécois sont nombreux à avancer l’hypothèse d’une bulle. En revanche, la classe politique et de nombreux experts au service des grandes banques prétendent qu’en dépit des apparences, la crainte est non fondée, qu’il n’y a pas de bulle… mais qu’il faut néanmoins rester vigilant. Le ministre fédéral des Finances, Jim Flaherty a d’ailleurs annoncé en février dernier des mesures pour «prévenir» la formation d’une telle bulle. Doit-on croire ce qu’on nous raconte et présumer qu’il s’agit d’un boom, ou bien nous fier à ce que nous observons et conclure qu’il s’agit d’une bulle? Mais d’abord, comment distinguer les deux phénomènes? Trois conditions doivent habituellement être réunies pour observer une bulle : (1) la hausse des prix est très rapide et disproportionnée; (2) le crédit est facile à obtenir; et (3) des mesures incitatives favorisent involontairement des comportements non désirés. Le cas américain est éloquent. En 1995, Washington oblige les banques à accorder des prêts à des clients peu solvables (subprime). Dès 1996, Fannie Mae et Freddie Mac se lancent dans la titrisation des hypothèques à risque. En 1997, l’Oncle Sam réduit l’imposition des gains en capital provenant de la vente d'une maison. La Réserve fédérale réduit son taux directeur qui passe de 6% en janvier 2001 à 1,75% en décembre 2001, puis à 1% en juin 2003. Comme il fallait s’y attendre, le prix des maisons augmente de manière historique, et les Américains s’endettent au-delà du raisonnable. C’est la bulle! Mais la Fed augmente son taux directeur à partir de 2004, ce qui refroidit le secteur immobilier. Très vite, de nombreux propriétaires sont incapables de respecter leurs obligations financières. Les banques saisissent les maisons, les prix chutent et la bulle éclate. Si les marchés canadien et américain sont différents à plusieurs égards, ils ont en commun plusieurs caractéristiques. Jusqu’à récemment, les Canadiens pouvaient s’acheter une maison sans aucune mise de fonds et avec une hypothèque amortie sur 40 ans. Du jamais vu! À l’instar de la Fed, la Banque du Canada a réduit son taux directeur à 0,25%, un niveau historiquement très bas, tandis que le gouvernement Harper a introduit une série de mesures visant à faciliter l’accès à la propriété (relèvement de la limite de retrait des REER, crédit d'impôt pour l'achat d'une première habitation, etc.). Quant à la Société canadienne d’hypothèques et de logement, elle a augmenté considérablement ses acquisitions de titres hypothécaires. On croirait à un «remake» de l’expérience américaine! Résultat? À l’échelle canadienne, le prix moyen d’une maison a augmenté de 95% de janvier 2000 à février 2010. À Montréal, la hausse atteint 113,2%. La dette des familles canadiennes représente maintenant 142% de leur revenu disponible, ce qui les rend terriblement vulnérables à la moindre hausse des taux d’intérêt. Si ce qui précède ne constitue pas une bulle, ça lui ressemble drôlement! Comme ce fut le cas pour toutes les bulles, celle-ci finira également par éclater. Quand? Je l’ignore, mais ce n’est qu’une question de temps. Et quand les Canadiens subiront la douleur d’une violente correction immobilière, les autorités monétaires et la classe politique chercheront des coupables à lapider sur la place publique. C’est alors qu’il nous faudra rester sourds aux discours tapageurs et nous souvenir des véritables artisans de notre malheur : la Banque centrale qui a adopté une politique monétaire malsaine, et des incitations à l’endettement

Le plus grand boom immobilier depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale est maintenant terminé. Le marché tourne à la faveur des acheteurs pour la première fois en plusieurs années, dit Scotia. Pour en lire plus...

New York Times, October 1, 2008 Failed Deals Replace Boom in New York Real Estate By CHARLES V. BAGLI After seven years of nonstop construction, skyrocketing rents and sales prices, and a seemingly endless appetite for luxury housing that transformed gritty and glamorous neighborhoods alike, the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York’s real estate boom to an end. Developers are complaining that lenders are now refusing to finance projects that were all but certain months or even weeks ago. Landlords bewail their inability to refinance skyscrapers with blue-chip tenants. And corporations are afraid to relocate within Manhattan for fear of making the wrong move if rents fall or a flagging economy forces layoffs. “Lenders are now taking a very hard look at each particular project to assess its viability in the context of a softening of demand,” said Scott A. Singer, executive vice president of Singer & Bassuk, a real estate finance and brokerage firm. “There’s no question that there’ll be a significant slowdown in new construction starts, immediately.” Examples of aborted deals and troubled developments abound. Last Friday, HSBC, the big Hong Kong-based bank, quietly tore up an agreement to move its American headquarters to 7 World Trade Center after bids for its existing home at 452 Fifth Avenue, between 39th and 40th Streets, came in 30 percent lower than the $600 million it wanted for the property. A 40-story office tower under construction by SJP Properties at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue for the past 18 months still does not have a tenant. And the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe last week suddenly pulled out of what had been an all-but-certain lease of 300,000 square feet of space at Citigroup Center, deciding instead to extend its lease at 666 Fifth Avenue for five years, in part because they hope rents will fall. “Everything’s frozen in place,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s lobbying association, shortly after the stock market closed on Monday. Barry M. Gosin, chief executive of Newmark Knight Frank, a national real estate firm based in New York, said: “Today, the entire financial system needs a lubricant. It’s kind of like driving your car after running out of oil and the engine seizes up. If there’s no liquidity and no financing, everything seizes up.” It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact will be, but real estate experts, economists and city and state officials say it is likely there will be far fewer new construction projects in the future, as well as tens of thousands of layoffs on Wall Street, fewer construction jobs and a huge loss of tax revenue for both the state and the city. Few trends have defined the city more than the development boom, from the omnipresent tower cranes to the explosion of high-priced condominiums in neighborhoods outside Manhattan, from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene to Williamsburg and Long Island City. Some developers who are currently erecting condominiums are trying to convert to rentals, while others are looking to sell the projects. After imposing double-digit rent increases in recent years, landlords say rents are falling somewhat, which could hurt highly leveraged projects, but also slow gentrification in what real estate brokers like to call “emerging neighborhoods” like Harlem, the Lower East Side and Fort Greene. At the same time, some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s most ambitious large-scale projects — the West Side railyards, Pennsylvania Station, ground zero, Coney Island and Willets Point — are going to take longer than expected to start and to complete, real estate experts say. “Most transactions in commercial real estate are on hold,” said Mary Ann Tighe, regional chief executive for CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage firm, “because nobody can be sure what the economy will look like, not only in the near term, but in the long term.” Although the real estate market in New York is in better shape than in most other major cities, a recent report by Newmark Knight Frank shows that there are “clear signs of weakness,” with the overall vacancy rate at 9 percent, up from 8.2 percent a year ago. Rents are also falling when landlord concessions are taken into account. The real estate boom has been fueled by a robust economy, a steady demand for housing and an abundance of foreign and domestic investors willing to spend tens of billions of dollars on New York real estate. It helped that lenders were only too happy to finance as much as 90 percent of the cost on the assumption that the mortgages could be resold to investors as securities. But that ended with the subprime mortgage crisis, which has since spilled over to all the credit markets, which have come to a standstill. As a result, real estate executives estimate that the value of commercial buildings has fallen by at least 20 percent, though the decline is hard to gauge when there is little mortgage money available to buy the buildings and therefore few sales. Long after the crisis began in 2007, many investors and real estate executives expected a “correction” to the rapid escalation in property values. But after Lehman Brothers, the venerable firm that had provided billions of dollars of loans for New York real estate deals, collapsed two weeks ago, it was clear that something more profound was afoot. And there was an immediate reaction in the real estate world: Tishman Speyer Properties, which controls Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building and scores of other properties, abruptly pulled out of a deal to buy the former Mobil Building, a 1.6 million-square-foot tower on 42nd Street, near Grand Central Terminal, for $400 million, two executives involved in the transaction said. Commercial properties are not the only ones facing problems. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s dropped its rating on the bonds used in Tishman’s $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complexes in 2006, the biggest real estate deal in modern history. Standard & Poor’s said it cut the rating, in part, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the properties’ value and the rapid depletion of reserve funds. The rating reduction shows the growing nervousness of lenders and investors about such deals, which have often involved aggressive — critics say unrealistic — projections of future income. “Any continued impediment to the credit markets is awful for the national economy, but it’s more awful for New York,” said Richard Lefrak, patriarch of a fourth-generation real estate family that owns office buildings and apartment houses in New York and New Jersey. “This is the company town for money,” he said. “If there’s no liquidity in the system, it exacerbates the problems. It’s going to have a serious effect on the local economy and real estate values.”

The housing boom may be over, but there's no bust in sight Jay Bryan, Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 With housing demand weaker, price gains have already slowed sharply.Reuters fileWith housing demand weaker, price gains have already slowed sharply. Ever since last year, forecasters have been predicting that Canada's hot housing market was about to slow to a much more sedate pace. Well, it's happened. Except that sedate is hardly the word for the 14% plunge in construction activity that turned up Monday in the housing starts data for July. To many, this sharp drop will be downright alarming, raising fears that the catastrophic housing meltdown in the U.S. has now spread across the border. They can relax. Or at least most of them can. Maybe a little nervousness is appropriate for those who bought near the market's peak in one of Canada's very high-flying centres of real-estate inflation -- places like Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria. In these towns, warns BMO Capital Markets economist Sal Guatieri, soaring home prices so greatly outstripped income growth that it wouldn't be surprising if real-estate values had to drop significantly in order to restore affordability to the market. But in most of Canada, what we're seeing looks like a normal return to earth after a six-year-long real-estate boom. The frenetic construction and double-digit price gains of yesteryear couldn't last forever, so now we've entered the cooling-off phase. Economic forecasters think the outlook for most cities is for prices to stagnate, or maybe edge down a little, while the level of construction eases, but doesn't collapse. If this doesn't seem to fit with the outlook foreshadowed by July's big drop in construction activity, that's simply because you're reading the numbers too literally. No one month's statistics mean very much, especially if you take them at face value. When you look at a chart of housing starts over a period of many months, it looks like a mountain range, with soaring peaks and deep valleys. Most of this volatility is caused by builders of condominiums and other multiple-unit developments, where a few projects more or less can make the numbers skyrocket or plummet. That's why analysts take the single-family starts more seriously. They're a lot less volatile and, thus, a better indicator of where the market is really heading. In July, single-family housing starts fell by just 7%. As well, nearly all of July's decline was in Ontario -- "think Toronto condos," says BMO Capital Markets analyst Robert Kavcic. And exceptionally wet weather in Eastern Canada likely slowed construction, notes Millan Mulraine of TD Securities. Outside of Toronto, most big cities saw only modest changes in total activity. So what can we expect for the coming months? Continued slowing, most likely, but certainly no savage nationwide meltdown on the model of the U.S. Royal Bank economist Paul Ferley notes that in 2007, Canadian housing construction remained little changed from the banner year of 2006, even as U.S. activity plummeted 26%. He thinks Canada's housing starts will drop by only about 5% this year, compared with a 30% plunge south of the border. Mr. Ferley thinks that 2009 will finally bring a significant drop in Canadian activity, but nothing like the U.S. collapse, with starts down by about 15%. The brake on construction is the slowdown in sales that started months ago, with sales figures in each month this year down from the comparable period in 2007, Mr. Guatieri noted. It's quite likely that this will continue into next year, since the U.S. economic slowdown and the recent sharp decline in commodity prices are both beginning to bite in Canada, bringing declines in job creation. With housing demand weaker, price gains have already slowed sharply. With a 5.4% average gain over the past year, Montreal is doing a little better than the national average of 3.5%. Toronto is near average at 3.8%. The hardest-hit include mainly big Western cities, with Vancouver up 1.8%, Edmonton 1.6%, Calgary a mere 0.1% and Victoria down by 0.4%. But even if the boom is over, there's no national bust in sight. Without the severe financial excesses and fraud that devastated the U.S. mortgage market, undermined that country's banking system and brought soaring numbers of home foreclosures, Canada simply doesn't have the conditions to trigger a housing collapse.

Surfant aujourd'hui sur le boom du prix du pétrole, les exploitants sont déterminés à ne pas laisser l'argent leur monter à la tête. Pour en lire plus...

Canada's housing boom is over, bank says VIRGINIA GALT Globe and Mail Update June 26, 2008 at 10:44 AM EDT After a long run of rapidly-rising prices, the Canadian housing market has cooled to the point that it is no longer a sellers' market, Toronto-Dominion Bank said Thursday. “The long-awaited end of the Canadian housing boom has occurred, reflecting more moderate demand and increased supply of properties for sale,” TD economists Craig Alexander and Pascal Gauthier said in a report. “The year-over-year price growth for existing homes in Canada's major markets fell to only 1.1 per cent in May, down from 8.6 per cent just four months earlier,” the TD economists wrote. “The trend has been broadly based, but is has been particularly sharp in some of the markets that had experienced the most dramatic price growth. Calgary and Edmonton home prices in April and May fell to below year-earlier levels.” The TD economists said they had expected the slowdown to occur before now, but “housing remained stronger for longer than we had anticipated, largely due to increased affordability through new financing options, such as no money down or extended amortization.” Regional economic strength related to the commodity boom also helped to fuel “unsustainably elevated home price growth in the west,” they wrote. Last month, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported that resale home listings across Canada rose by 17.7 per cent in April from a year earlier – pushing the number of home listings to the highest level on record. At the time, Bank of Montreal economist Douglas Porter noted: “For the first time in a long time, sellers are not in the drivers' seat any more. I'm not necessarily saying that buyers are in the drivers' seat either, but what we've seen truly is a return to a balanced market.” The TD economists concurred in their report Thursday. “Most of Canada's major housing markets have moved out of sellers' territory to more balanced markets.” Mr. Alexander and Mr. Gauthier forecast modest national average price growth of 2 per cent this year and 3.5 per cent in 2009, “down substantially from the 10 per cent annual pace of the last six years.” However, the Canadian housing market remains fundamentally strong, unlike the U.S. market, where the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that median home prices continued to fall. The median price of an existing U.S. home sold in May was $208,600 (U.S), down 6.3 per cent from a year earlier – fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis. In Canada, the TD economists forecast an average existing home price of $313,300 (Canadian) in 2008, up 2 per cent from last year's average. Canadians, the TD economists said, are “cashing in, not foreclosing. “... It should be stressed that the rise in listings does not reflect homeowners of principal dwellings desperate to sell, and this is the dominant difference between the Canadian and U.S. experience,” they wrote in their report, Canada's Housing Boom Comes to an End. “Indeed, the U.S. has been characterized by an abnormal rise in delinquencies and foreclosures or large negative equity positions. In Canada, speculators may be quickly dumping properties on the market to get out while the times are good, but individuals that have a principal dwelling are not under financial duress. “Canadian consumers are nowhere nearly as leveraged through their home equity as American consumers are.” Throughout the rest of this year and 2009, most regional housing markets in Canada “will see low to mid single-digit gains, but Saskatchewan and Manitoba will continue to post double-digit gains in the near term, followed by a significant cooling in 2009 – with the risk of a mild price correction in the major cities that have recently experienced extraordinary price growth,” the TD economists said. “Alberta will have further weakness in the near term, as Calgary and Edmonton will likely see prices continue to fall for another three or four quarters, dropping 8 per cent to 10 per cent from their peak, after which prices should stabilize and start rising at a low single-digit pace.” http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080626.whousing0626/BNStory/Business/home

La Laurentienne prévoit une croissance modérée au Québec 20 juin 2008 - 08h11 La Presse Canadienne L'économie québécoise progressera à un rythme inférieur à sa vitesse de croisière habituelle en 2008 et 2009, selon Valeurs mobilières Banque Laurentienne, qui publie ses perspectives, vendredi. L'économiste Sébastien Lavoie précise que la croissance économique de 0,8 et de 1,7% pour ces deux années sera en-deçà de la moyenne de 2% observée depuis 2001. L'économie québécoise subira les contrecoups du ralentissement aux États-Unis compte tenu de son grand degré d'ouverture aux échanges commerciaux. Toutefois, M. Lavoie n'entrevoit pour le Québec aucune récession. Il cite à cet effet quelques facteurs: l'allègement fiscal provincial sur le revenu et la baisse de la taxe sur les produits et services (TPS) qui stimuleront les dépenses de ménages; le grand nombre de projets d'investissements privés et publics; l'exploration dans les secteurs minier et gazier, et la bonne santé de l'agriculture. Click here to find out more! La Banque Laurentienne prévoit qu'ailleurs au Canada, l'expansion économique sera également plus modérée cette année. En Ontario, le dérapage de l'industrie automobile frappera fort. L'expansion économique y sera la plus faible au pays en 2008, tout près du point neutre. Pour la première fois depuis 2002, la croissance économique albertaine sera inférieure à 2,5%. L'Alberta laissera sa place à la Saskatchewan comme chef de file au pays puisque sa croissance économique avoisinera 3%. En plus du pétrole, la Saskatchewan est un important producteur mondial de potasse et d'uranium. Leader mondial dans la production de blé et d'orge, cette province est aussi de loin celle qui est en meilleure posture pour profiter du boom du prix des céréales. Le secteur de l'agriculture au Manitoba tirera également son épingle du jeu. Plus à l'Ouest, la Colombie-Britannique profitera des entreprises qui se lancent à la recherche de nouveaux sites d'exploitation de gaz naturel. Le nouveau cousin riche du Canada, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, ne recevra plus de paiements de péréquation très bientôt en raison du boom pétrolier. L'annonce prochaine d'un accord avec le gouvernement du Canada au sujet des revenus énergétiques extracôtiers pourrait aider la situation économique et fiscale de la Nouvelle-Écosse. La croissance économique sera modeste en Nouveau-Brunswick et à l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard.

Boom économique à Fermont Les projets miniers génèrent un véritable boom économique dans les villes nordiques de Labrador City et de Fermont. Les nouveaux projets d'exploitation de Consolidated Thompson, les travaux de modernisation d'IOC et de ceux d'ArcelorMittal Mines Canada (anciennement Québec-Cartier) entraîneront des investissements totaux de près de 1 milliard de dollars dans la région. Les travaux amènent aussi de nouveaux travailleurs qu'il faut nourrir et loger. Michel Fillion, porte-parole d'IOC, qui se prépare à investir 500 millions pour augmenter sa production, indique que 150 à 200 travailleurs sont attendus cet été, ce qui fera grimper le nombre de travailleurs à près de 500. « Plusieurs vont déjà utiliser le camp de construction que nous prévoyons pour l'expansion. Je dois vous dire aussi que l'on va utiliser toutes les chambres d'hôtel disponibles à Labrador Ouest », ajoute M. Fillion. Le scénario est similaire pour la nouvelle venue dans la région, la minière Consolidated Thompson qui lance un chantier de 400 millions de dollars. Le secteur de la construction est en pleine effervescence. La directrice du CLD, Louisette Champagne, qui habite la région depuis 31 ans, admet qu'elle n'a jamais vu une telle situation. « Ça fait longtemps qu'il n'y a plus personne à embaucher à Fermont et qu'il n'y a plus aucun endroit pour se loger », observe-t-elle. Les commerces ne parviennent pas à répondre à la demande, faute de personnel. La coopérative d'achat de Fermont manque de relève. Le second restaurant de la ville semble impossible à rouvrir pour le moment. La Chambre de commerce de Labrador City a lancé le mot d'ordre aux hôtels, épiceries et restaurants pour qu'ils stockent davantage de denrées. La semaine passée, la ville a manqué d'oeufs. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/est-quebec/2008/06/06/007-fermont-boom.asp?ref=rss

Toronto's Condo Kings: Is their boom sustainable? Property developer Peter Freed, head of Freed Decelopments poses for a photo at his penthouse apartment in downtown Toronto.Chris Young for Financial PostProperty developer Peter Freed, head of Freed Decelopments poses for a photo at his penthouse apartment in downtown Toronto. Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post Published: Monday, June 02, 2008 From his penthouse in Toronto's hip fashion district, Peter Freed can track the development of his six next condo projects taking shape along King Street West. One of Mr. Freed's buildings will have interiors by Philippe Starck, the must-have French designer of the moment. Another will be inspired by the Neoplasticism art movement made famous by Mondrian, where design is pared down to the basics of lines and the primary colours red, yellow and blue. Mr. Freed has eight projects on the board worth a total of half a billion dollars, a tiny fraction of the record 33,980 units under construction in the city. Canada's biggest city has become North America's biggest condo market, with more units now under development than Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles. As Mr. Freed looks off his terrace, where the lap pool and giant padded loungers are looking a little forlorn on a wet spring day, he is confident Toronto will not also become North America's biggest condo meltdown. "Right now, there's very large demand," says Mr. Freed, dressed casually in jeans, shirt-tails hanging out, no laces in his shoes. At 39, the laid-back developer is the fresh face of an eclectic group of condo kings who are transforming the very skyline of the city. Along with other design-focused builders like Cityzen Development Group, stalwarts like Tridel Corp. and Menkes Developments Ltd., and newcomers like Bazis International Inc., Mr. Freed is banking on the view Toronto is undergoing a seismic housing shift. Figures show a marked slowing in the Canadian housing market this year, including a 7.3% year-over-year drop in existing homes sales in Toronto in April and a subsiding of the mania that drove the condo market into overdrive last year. But builders say demographics, immigration, government regulation and cultural change will continue to skew demand for housing toward the condominium. Housing hotspots like Calgary may have already burned themselves out in a frenzy of building and soaring prices, but Toronto's rise as a global city will allow it to ride out any short-term weakness, they say. "We understand there's 75,000 people a year for the next 20 years projected to move into the city core," says Mr. Freed. So Toronto's condo kings, mostly privately held, backed by joint-venture partners and old-fashioned bank loans, are knee-deep in a building boom that has seen 67,984 condo units in 316 buildings launched since 2004. To anyone walking the city streets, the scale of activity is eye-popping, with dozens of cranes swinging like mammoth meccano sets across the skyline, the monotonous thud of foundation pilings being driven into the ground and convoys of cement trucks causing endless traffic snarls. They are building by the waterfront, around the subway line in the north of the city and in the east end where work-live lofts are all the rage. At Concord CityPlace, an 18-hectare master-planned city near the waterfront, 21 condo towers will eventually arise from barren railway lands, along with town homes, lofts and a large park. The city-within-a-city will be home to 16,000 people. "People ask us all the time what's going to go on in the market," says James Ritchie, vice-president of sales and marketing at Tridel, the biggest builder of condos in Toronto and owned by the DelZotto family. "To be candid, it's very difficult to tell you where it's going to go one way or another, other than when we look at the fundamentals, what's happening here in Toronto and how it's going to affect housing. The fact is, it's sustaining itself." Toronto real estate developers need to be an optimistic lot. Not only do they have the current U.S. housing bust hanging over their heads, but also the still-fresh memory of the Toronto property crash of the early 1990s. "We didn't call that a recession in our industry; it was a depression," says Sam Crignano of Cityzen, which has 14 projects and 9,000 units on the board, including the Daniel Libeskind-designed glass L Tower, which will rise like a glam-rock platform boot at the foot of the city on Front Street. "It was that perfect storm - a number of factors all converged to create that disaster." Double-digit interest rates, overbuilding, the introduction of the GST and a recession that sent unemployment soaring to 12%, brought the Toronto property market to its knees. According to Goldman Sachs, it was the fourth longest of 24 housing busts in the OECD since the 1970s. Prices declined from December, 1989, to September, 1998, a 34-quarter marathon that took values down 50% in some areas. Not only did the residential market fall apart, but Canada was home base for some very public flameouts in the commercial and retail real estate sector, with Campeau Corp. and the Reichmann's Olympia & York Developments Ltd. filing for bankruptcy. Now, the U.S. housing meltdown looms large, with prices down about 14% from their 2006 peak and so many homes on the market it would take nearly a year to shift the supply. The developers have noticed the first quarter softening. But they are not afraid. New condo sales totalled 3,433 in Toronto, only eight fewer units than last year, according to Urbanation, a condo tracking firm. And the price per square foot for sales rose to $388 from $348. However, with a glut of new buildings nearing competition or under construction, the market is definitely expected to cool. Brad Lamb, Toronto's biggest condo broker, and its most flamboyant, says new condo sales could be off as much as 40% this year and resales 10%. Mr. Lamb has his head, plastered onto the body of a lamb on billboards all over the city. He also hosts Big City Broker on HGTV, a "docu-soap" looking at the business of real estate. "But last year was an incredible, stupid year, where literally every property we put on the market sold by auction, with four or five bidders for every property," he says. "We're still getting that a bit, but it will start to taper off. The time to sell is about 30 days. A year ago it was 15 days. It will probably go to 60 days, which is a normal market. Sixty days is still a seller's market." The condo kings take a long-term view of a city they say is still in its infancy. "Over the last 10 years Toronto has grown by over a million people," says Alan Menkes, president at Menkes Development, which has been developing homes in the Toronto area for the past half century. Its latest project is the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences, a two-tower development in tony Yorkville, where luxury suites will run from 1,100 to 9,000 square feet and prices from $1.2-million to $16-million. "You're adding jobs, you're adding buying power," Mr. Menkes says. "They come with capital and they're looking for housing." Immigration is the main driver behind the condo story for Toronto, say developers, each one of whom can reel off the statistics on their fingers. Immigration to Canada totals roughly 225,000 a year and some 40% to 50% settle in Toronto. The Greater Toronto Area is expected to swell from about 5.5 million people to 6.9 million in 2016 and 8.3 million by 2031. The city proper is projected to reach 3.05 million by 2031. The Ontario government increasingly wants that population contained. In 2005, the province slapped an 800,000-hectare greenbelt - about the size of Prince Edward Island - around Lake Ontario, protecting a large swathe from development. The effect has been to intensify construction around established cities and vertically. Immigrants are used to living in apartments, developers add. With rental units all but disappearing as a result of the rent controls of the 1990s, the condo is a natural alternative. "The house is really more a North American phenomenon because no one in Europe can afford it because land is so expensive," says Michael Gold, president of Bazis North America. The developer has 35 projects underway around the world, including 1 Bloor, an 80-storey tower to be built on the corner of Canada's priciest retail strip. "We really see Toronto catching up to the rest of the world." Mr. Ritchie is loath to call the recent increase in building "a boom." Rather, he prefers to call it a slow, steady ramp-up to accommodate the growing swell of people. Besides immigrants, young people - especially women - are fuelling condo demand. They live with their parents longer, save money and move directly into home ownership. "One of our developments at Broadway and Redpath, I would say 25% to 30% of those units were purchased by single women probably in their late-20s, early-30s on a career path," says Mr. Crignano of Cityzen. Mr. Lamb says his company has reams of buyers in their 20s, drawn by the affordability of condos. "They used to be over 30," he says. "It's a very industrious generation of young people who see the benefit of owning their own property." The condo scene is turning Toronto into a young and very social city, Mr. Lamb adds. "CityPlace is like Peyton Place or Melrose Place," he says. "In a building like CityPlace with 400 people - 400 people typically under 40 - I can tell you the scene at the pool is crazy." At the other end of the spectrum, empty-nesters and an increasingly mobile and wealthy international set are demanding luxury and high-end design. It is a trend being witnessed around the globe, the end product of years of strong economic growth - spurred by the development of China, Russia, India, Brazil and fanned by low interest rates - which has raised income across the world. Phillipe Starck, for example, is designing interiors in Thailand, China, Japan, and Denmark. Canada's resource boom has brought it to the party. Mr. Freed says demand for more expensive units has risen gradually and that the luxury buyer is prepared to shop around. "We sold 20 high-end units in other buildings that were between $1-million and $2-million, but we had a lot of people who didn't buy," he says. "They didn't want to be in buildings with people who were buying units for $180,000." In March, he sold $20-million worth of condos in two weeks at one of his higher-end buildings, where units range from $1.5-million to $5.million. Mr. Menkes at Menkes Development says 70% of the Four Seasons Private Residences have been sold. "We're really providing a product that was not available before. We're putting Toronto on the map in terms of international draw," he says. The developers see every downtown Toronto parking lot or disused industrial space eventually filled with condos, mixed with shops and restaurants, and an increasingly educated and wealthy public - working in banking, design, media, medical research and the arts - moving in. Even if there are lean years ahead, they say they are much wiser than they were in the early '90s, with buildings pre-sold before the foundations are dug. "The fiscal discipline that has been instilled in developers today because of the '90s debacle has put us in much better standing," Mr. Menkes says. "Just in terms of banking underwriting, when we do construction loans, the discipline is much more rigorous." Cautionary notes aside, it is clear the condo kings are thrilled to be participating in the rise of Canada's condo city. "The city is going to be much wealthier and much more exciting because of all these new developments," Mr. Lamb says. Adds Mr. Menkes: "I think everyone feels proud when they see the nice skyline of the city they're living in." "I've lived in Toronto my whole life," says Mr. Freed. "To see certain downtown neighbourhoods take shape and become so liveable, so fast, it's incredible." Financial Post jthorpe@nationalpost.com http://www.financialpost.com/reports/property/story.html?id=552055 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ From boom to gloom? Is that a continued property boom on the horizon or is a bust just around the corner?Peter Redman/National PostIs that a continued property boom on the horizon or is a bust just around the corner? Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post Published: Friday, May 30, 2008 Leave it to Garth Turner to throw cold water on the notion Canada can achieve a soft real estate landing, when history and the slump south of the border show that is a rare feat indeed. The personal-finance author-turned-Conservative-turned-Liberal MP for Halton, Ont., was one of the first to warn of the 1990s property flop - albeit several years too early. Now he thinks Canada is facing precisely the same mix of elements that burst the U.S. real estate bubble. "We are in a monumental denial phase," says Mr. Turner, who's book Greater Fool - The Troubled Future of Real Estate was published in March. "My theses is now reality, we are starting to see substantial sales declines that were ruled out only six months ago as impossible," he says. "But now people are saying prices aren't moving down. They will." The figures do show a noticeable retreat in the Canadian housing market this year. Nationally, resales fell 6.1% year-over-year in April, while price gains have slowed to 4% from around 10% in each of the prior five years. Calgary saw sales drop 31.2% over the year, Edmonton, 25.4% and Victoria 14.2%. Calgary and Edmonton also saw prices dips. According to Urbanation, a condo tracking firm, the condo market has defied the trend and remained fairly steady through the first quarter, even as a several new buildings hit the market. Mr. Turner says housing markets blow themselves out when prices rise beyond the reach of average buyers. This is what happened in the United States. "To keep the party going, the mortgage industry, the credit industry, backed by the banks, decided to lower the bar to ownership," he says. The subprime industry was born and home buyers with scant credit history and skimpy income were drawn into the market, enticed by no-money-down mortgages and interest rates that started out low, then ballooned to unsupportable levels. Similarly, in Canada, prices have risen beyond the reach of the average buyer, Mr. Turner argues. "What has been the response?" he asks. "The 40-year mortgage." Economists estimate amortizations longer than 25 years now constitute about 70% of all insured mortgage applications and about half of that amount is for the 40-year product. Mr. Turner reserves his starkest warnings for sprawling suburbs mushrooming around Canada's major cities. He says many new home developments have mortgage representatives onsite offering the same kind of no-money-down deals that dragged down the U.S. market. Buyers just have to come up with 1.5% of the house value to cover closing costs. These will become the "particle board slums of the future," Mr. Turner says, as smaller families and surging energy costs cause the suburbs to fall out of favour. But the Toronto condo market is heading for trouble too, as overbuilding swamps demand, he says. "We are classically at the end of a bull market," Mr. Turner says. Read the argument for a boom Financial Post jthorpe@nationalpost.com Close Presented by Reader Discussion http://www.financialpost.com/reports/property/story.html?id=552055