Flaherty

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Announced further tightening of Mortgage rules for high ratio mortgages in Canada Monday.

Though our Real Estate market has slowed the Government spun this as protecting Canadians from becoming too indebt, though they did nothing to make any changes to Credit Cards, Loans or Lines of Credit where the Big Banks make a much nicer profit margin.

The changes include reducing the aximum amortizatin from 35 years to 30, cancelling high ratio insured lines of credit, and reducing the maximum people can refinance their homes from 90% to 85%.

While this seems all well and good to protect us from a "US Style Real Estate meltdown", what it really does is reduce the amount of people, particularily in BC who can buy a home, as well as makes it much tougher for people to move their mortgage from their current lender, if they have a 35 year or more amortization or are above 85% lending currently, whcih seems to be a big benefit to the Banks...makes me wonder who is really pulling the strings in Ottawa...