Who’s looking to buy our homes? + MORE Jun 3rd

NEW YORK, N.Y. – With oddsmakers all but pulling a summer rate hike off the table after a terrible U.S. jobs report and a wash of other disheartening economic data, the nation’s biggest banks took pummeling from investors Friday.
The financial sector has been waiting seven years for the Federal Reserve to increase the short-term interest rates substantially, which allows banks to follow with higher rates for borrowing.
The Fed raised rates at the end of last year, but just barely.
The report from the Labor Department on Friday, showing that there was a drastic slowdown in hiring by U.S. employers in May, rewrote the story many had expected to unfurl later this month and in July when the Fed meets.
Financials were the biggest decliner by far of the 10 Standard & Poor’s sectors Friday, with the biggest banks leading the way down.
Bank of America Corp. took the biggest tumble in midday trading, down 4.2 per cent. Shares of Citigroup Inc. also traded down more than 4 per cent as CEO Mike Corbat suggested second-quarter earnings would drop 25 per cent from the same period last year…

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne tours the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada assembly plant during a campaign stop in Cambridge, Ont., on Tuesday, May 21, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to Japan a few weeks ago and spent some time with Japanese auto executives telling them about the benefits of making cars in Canada. Some, like Toyota and Honda have been here a long time and they produce high quality vehicles at competitive prices in Ontario.  Others have yet to be convinced to locate some of their production here. Its great that the Prime Minister recognizes that part of his job is building these relationships and marketing investment in Canada. Early in his mandate, he is already making it an integral part of his foreign travels.
Yet some commentators believe that firms’ investment decisions should be left to so-called market forces and that governments should not be marketing their jurisdictions or otherwise trying to influence firms’ investment decisions…

In the market to sell your house and want to know who’s buying our homes? Still debating whether or not foreign money impacts Canadian real estate prices? You may want to consider how many visits Canadian real estate listings got last year from foreign buyers. According to the current Insights Report, from the Canadian Real Estate Association, there were more than 10.5 million international visits to Realtor.ca in 2015.
As the most popular real estate website in Canada, Realtor.ca received more than 71 million unique visitors last year. The vast majority were Canadian repeat buyers (62%) or first-time home buyers (12%).
(Source: Google Analytics and Foresee / CREA Realtor.ca Insights Report 2016)
Of the international visits to the Realtor.ca site, the vast majority came from the United States (67.3%), while Chinese and Hong Kong buyers accounted for 4.7% of the visits (2.7% and 2%, respectively), and UK residents made up 3.9% of the visits to Canada’s leading online listings market…

TORONTO – The Toronto area’s real estate market set a record last month, with nearly 13,000 homes sold, despite sky-high prices and new federal mortgage rules targeted at Canada’s most expensive housing markets.
The Toronto Real Estate Board said Friday the number of sales last month was up 10.6 per cent from May 2015 and prices were up about 15 per cent. That came one day after its counterpart in Vancouver also reported record-breaking sales for the month.
For a detached house in the city of Toronto, the average price last month was $1.28 million, while the average price for all homes was $782,051, TREB said.
TREB president Mark McLean said a shortage of homes for sale helped drive the rise in prices.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau has increased the minimum down payment for homes over $500,000, a measure aimed specifically at Toronto and Vancouver.
As of February, homebuyers were required to put down 10 per cent on the portion of a home over $500,000. Buyers can still put down five per cent on the first $500,000 of a home purchase…

LOS ANGELES — A Canadian real estate tycoon’s son who explored the darkest side of evil in his graphic novel is now accused of carrying out such an act.
Blake Leibel was charged this week with murder in the torture and mutilation of a girlfriend who had just given birth to their child. Deputies discovered the bloodless body of Iana Kasian after breaking through a barricade to get into the couple’s West Hollywood apartment last week, prosecutors said.
The case has grabbed attention in Canada, where his father, Lorne Leibel, a sailor on the country’s 1976 Olympics team, built a fortune constructing homes in the Toronto area and is known for his love of Ferraris and racing powerboats.
The father and his estranged wife, Eleanor Leibel, provided for their two sons when they moved to California years ago, according to papers filed in an Ontario court. Each was given a big house and Blake Leibel lived off an allowance of about $18,000 a month over a seven year period until inheriting the majority of his mother’s estate…