For Vancouver readers, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is not that a Cabinet Minister is capable of hilarious indiscretions, or somehow has access to a 0%-down mortgage, but that a 2,800 sqft SFH in a “ritzy area” of our nation’s capital can sell for a mere $880K! Now THAT’S newsworthy. -vreaa
This extracted from the Ottawa Citizen, 2 Apr 2010, 10:32 am -
Embattled Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis may have one potential reason to resist calls for her resignation – a large mortgage on a new Ottawa home she recently purchased.
[2,800 sqft two storey home; Rockcliffe; Sale price $880K; Mortgage $880K]
The transaction was financed through a Bank of Nova Scotia branch in Edmonton, where Guergis’s husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, held a seat until the last federal election. It is unclear if Guergis bought the house with no money down, or whether the bank rolled an additional line of credit or other loan onto the mortgage to bring it up to the full purchase price of the house.
Most home-buyers make a down-payment of 5 per cent or more of the purchase price of home to qualify for a government-insured mortgage, but there is nothing to stop a bank from lending the full amount of the property.
As a minister of state, Guergis earns $56,637 on top of her MP salary of $157,731.
Vancouver makes you forget what halfway sane RE looks like, eh?
Househunting.ca ran new buyer porn a few weeks back, a couple bought detached for $275k or so in Barrhaven, an Ottawa suburb.
When politicians say that Canada isn’t in a full on housing bubble, that’s true for much of the country. But that just means key federal policies are geared toward dealing with a much milder housing crisis than what we have around here.