Ottawa - Buying a house can be enough to cause night sweats and jangled nerves at the best of times. For most people, it's the single largest purchase they will ever make and paying for it can take two or three decades. But the thought of buying a home in the midst of the current financial crisis seems to have been enough to scare some people right out of the market.
"Every time you turn on the television or open the newspaper you are hit with negative economic news, day after day after day," says British Columbia realtor Cal Lindberg, president of the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). "When consumers are not confident about their financial situation, they're not active in the housing market."
As a result, Lindberg said many buyers have simply chosen to sit on the sidelines, "waiting for the market to hit bottom."
The trouble, he said, is that just like in the stock market there's no way of knowing when prices have bottomed out and the next upswing is beginning.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
