Homeowners in Canada may soon experience some temporary relief from the rising cost of home ownership, according to the RBC Economics Research report released on Monday, that found home ownership costs continued to rise in the second quarter of 2010, even as housing sales slowed significantly.

The six-month period starting last October was a period of exceptionally strong housing demand and rising prices in some markets, particularly in British Columbia and Ontario, due to a number of factors.

“While housing demand has cooled considerably since winter, a matching decline in homes available for sale has kept markets in Canada sufficiently tight to allow further modest price increases,” the report said.

However, rising household income, a trend toward falling long-term mortgage rates and the expectation that home prices should moderate slightly will provide consumers with some short-term respite, the report said.

The report found the costs of owning a home increased the most in Ontario and British Columbia, where consumers are most sensitive to mortgage rate changes because the high property values in those provinces amplify the impact of an increase in monthly mortgage changes.

Those provinces were also slapped with the new harmonized sales tax in July that now applies to real estate services and others associated with purchasing a home.

The RBC housing affordability report measures the proportion of pre-tax household income required to service the costs of mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities.

It found the price of an average two-storey home rose 10 per cent from the same quarter last year to $374,200, taking up about 48.9 per cent of income.

Interest in sustainable architecture and environmental construction is spreading all over North America, both in the U.S. and Canada.
“Thirty years ago there were very few people into this kind of thing. It was hard to find craftspeople, and the products and materials were expensive,” says Victoria artist J.C. Scott, the designer of such unique buildings as Michael Williams’s glass house on Ten Mile Point and the Teahouse Restaurant in Stanley Park.

But thanks to increasing demand, soaring awareness and a shift in consciousness, that’s all changing.

“There is a very, very strong green movement sweeping North America and one of the epicentres is right here on Vancouver Island, where top artisans and craftspeople are committed to doing the right thing,” said Scott.

But what is exactly Green Architecture?

Over the past couple of decades, architects and builders looking to green their projects all over the world have turned to the addition of various piecemeal elements to save water here or cut down on electricity there. But now the concept has taken a step beyond those short-sighted unconnected goals.

The concept of the “living building” has now emerged as a new ideal for design and construction. A living building is defined as a structure that “generates all of its own energy with renewable nontoxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.”

Read More:

• The Victoria Times Colonist
• Scientific American

Most of the focus of the mortgage industry in Canada is on five-year fixed-rate mortgages, still the most popular fixed-rate product for consumers. The federal government cemented that popularity with new rules in April that favoured Canadians locking in their rate for five years by making qualifying for the product easier.

But there’s a significant number of Canadians who have become even more conservative than the federal government anticipated and are locking in longer-term rates. The trend may have something to do with the rates themselves, which have dropped to 4.95% on a 10-year mortgage.

Although since 1975 borrowers who opted to go variable were the financial winners 82 per cent of the time, fixed rates were advantageous through the late 1970s and briefly in the late 1980s, and in both cases ahead of a period of rising interest rates, as it is the case now.

Statistics from the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals show how 12% of the Canadian mortgage market is in a term longer than five years. Setting aside the five-year term, the most popular mortgages in Canada are seven and 10 years. CAAMP estimates about two-thirds of that 12% figure is in a seven-year mortgage with the other third in a 10-year.