Canadian Funding Corp Reviews CMHC Sustainability Reports

The G-8 summit starts today in L’Aquila, Italy. The G-8 are the old guard: US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia. And their opinions are starting to look a little redundant in the aftermath of the credit crisis.

The credit crisis has shifted the balance of power. Not since the days of the conquistadors has there been such an imbalance. Back then the Pope was the ultimate power and carved the New World in two between Spain and Portugal. Now it’s the split between old and new economies.

The levels of debt raised by the developed nations to bail out their banking systems is crippling compared to the emerging nations.  According to recent International Monetary Fund forecasts by 2014 the debt of economies in the developed world are expected to be more than 114% of GDP (up from 78% in 2006).  The forecasts for the emerging economies (including China) is just 35% (down from 38% in 2006).

With most of the developed nations in the worst economic condition since the second world war, the balance of power is clearly shifting in favor of the large emerging nations. China and India in particular.

Added to their new found lack of financial flexibility, the G-8 nations have another major problem: a lack of harmony in their thinking. Germany and Canada have been calling for a steady wind down of the emergency liquidity measures while the UK and US continue to favor pumping cash into the economies.

On the other hand the leaders of 5 major developing Economies (China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa) are holding their own parallel meeting. This follows on from the first ever BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) summit held last month in Russia. The developing powers are quickly putting in place their own structures and the old world is in danger of being left out of the new world order. The closer these developing powers become politically the less likely the dollar is to remain as the world’s reserve currency. Remember the BRIC nations currently hold some US$1.1 trillion of US government debt. At the BRIC summit Russia was calling for a move away from the US dollar.  It feels more and more like a whenrather than an if situation.

As investors, we are often faced with difficult decisions, especially those which involve putting cold hard facts ahead of personal feelings. We are entering such a phase now. We need to put aside our personal nationalism in the face of an obvious global power shift. Jim Rogers said in an interview last year that the best investment you could give your kids today is to buy them Chinese lessons. We agree.

As far as our financial portfolios are concerned we need to make sure we are having our piece of the emerging pie. There are unique risks to investing in the emerging world (e.g. political instability, weak legal systems etc) and you really have to do your homework. I would recommend keeping your exposure to less than 10% of your total portfolio. Also stick to highly liquid assets, like stocks and bonds. You don’t want to wake up finding that you never really owned that real estate you bought in China and it has been bulldozed to build a sports stadium, now do you?

http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/could-a-bric-alliance-crash-the-dollar/18846

reviewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO

Any time I step into a lawyer’s office, I feel guilty.

I do not know whether it has anything at all to do with my profession, or if it is the series of books that lawyers are so fond to prominently display behind their desks. Those old, conspicuous textbooks with ominous titles written in gold Gothic characters on yellowish or greenish hardbound covers, barely readable, much less understandable. I noticed that no matter whether the law office is located in Canada or in the United States, those textbooks look exactly alike. I still have to see a single lawyer actually reading one of them, however, so my personal theory is that those books are hollow inside and used to conceal who knows whatever arcane secret items or, perhaps, just unsavory culinary recipes. In real estate too we are fast approaching the time when our shelves are going to be filled with all sorts of books. Yellow, red and blue, with manuals covering all sorts of topics from Ethics in Real Estate to How to Write a Contract And Not Go To Jail. I have been tinkering with the idea of writing a manual myself – just a small pocketbook entitled “Top 10 Successful Strategies To Defuse Sellers Armed With Pitchforks”, which I figure would be an instant hit with many of us.

With the ever-advancing technology of our times fields of expertise that are crowd-oriented, such as the legal and real estate professions, are poised to experience dramatic changes in the forthcoming years. As it relates specifically to real estate, to be sure, technology has had already a great impact but innovation is not over yet and it is not confined merely to the use of sophisticated hardware. There is on the horizon a new conceptualization of professionalism, an absolutely novel way to haess individual resources for the common good of all. It is called ‘collective intelligence’, a techno-jargon concept that will revolutionize the way we – the professionals – think, act and interact among ourselves as well as with the communities we serve. Collective intelligence tinkers with the way cognition and information processing are structured and relayed to consumers, especially when they involve knowledge, expertise and leaing. It also delves into methods of gathering and sharing information and resources that bind different groups, or associations, or disciplines. Real estate is, of course, intertwined with banking, law, economics, marketing and urban sciences and collective intelligence links and bind together different networks or resources to coordinate a more efficient and comprehensive response to ever- sophisticated demands.

Real estate professionals are called more and more to field questions that go over and beyond the mere act of selling. In fact, it can be said that selling in real estate already represents the last stage when the professional is finally compensated. But before that there is an array of issues that must be confronted and answered, ranging from understanding regional economics such as, for instance, local job environments and trades to proficiency in specific areas such as cultural orientation and demographic diversity to acquaintance with well-defined facets of disciplines the likes of architectural styles, land-assembly and development, and contract law. This radicalization of the real estate business to come is in response to the evolution of choices of market participants. Although singular consumers do not have more power over market events than before, they certainly have improved their chances of getting what they want because they have a greater variety of choices. We are, in essence, entering an era where the professional leas and stores information gathered from a group or organization and is ready to deliver it to a consumer, or another group or organization, on demand for the purpose of enhancing choices through expertise.

Sharing information is of paramount importance in real estate, since there is not a ‘national’ market per se. Real estate is made of a compilation of local economies, each abiding to a set or sets of local inputs and variables. What is happening in Toronto does not directly affect what is happening in Vancouver. And yet, there is a common thread shared in the needs of individual expressions of market participants, no matter where they are located. The Realtor, as an integral part of his function and purpose, is going to be required to contribute to the building of a consensus decision-making process that involves meeting everyone’s needs and which is intended to promote and enhance the decision-making process of each individual consumer, whether a person, a group of persons or an organization.

http://realestatesold.blogspot.com/2009/07/tinkering-with-cognition.html

viewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO

July 2, 2009, Canadian Funding Corp Sustainability Update – Spencer Creek Village is a large-scale, high-density residential development located in the heart of the community of Dundas in Hamilton, Ontario.The development will contain 598 residential units in nine buildings along with 1,300 m2 (14,000 sq. ft.) of commercial space.Two phases of the development are already complete, with a third one currently under construction.This redevelopment of a former steel foundry site incorporated extensive use of on-site soils sorting and recycling to reduce costs and materials sent to landfill.The development has also been designed to fit into the existing neighbourhood.

This 4.5 hectare (11 acre) property is located beside Spencer Creek in the heart of the former town of Dundas in Hamilton, Ontario.This was the location of the former Bertram Foundry (the John Bertram and Sons Company Limited), established in the 1860s. Woodworking tools, machine tools, engineering equipment for railroads and bridges, military tank parts, armaments and mining equipment were manufactured on this site.The site was primarily contaminated with foundry sand (heavy metals), creosote, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and petroleum hydrocarbons.

Urban Horse Developments purchased the property in the mid-1990s after attempts by other developers to initiate redevelopment of the site.The 20,440 m2 (220,000 sq. ft.) foundry building was demolished and the site was remediated using primarily dig and dump, on-site sorting and reuse of acceptable soils as fill, and some bioremediation for the petroleum hydrocarbons. The developer also made extensive use of recycling of wood, steel, brick and concrete during the demolition to lower costs and reduce the amount of material going to landfill.

The first phase of the 11-phase development, a 48-unit condominium apartment building, was completed in 2002.The second phase, a 62-unit apartment condominium, was completed in 2003. Construction has now commenced on the third phase, another 62-unit apartment condominium.These residential condominium buildings are being built by Alterra Developments.The development is expected to be completed by 2010 and will include 598 residential units comprised of 458 condominium apartment units in eight buildings, 140 rental apartment units for seniors in a four-storey building, and 1,300 m2 (14,000 sq. ft.) of commercial space.

This project was the first large-scale, high-density residential Brownfield Redevelopment Project in the Hamilton area, and one of the earliest examples of a successful large Brownfield Redevelopment Project for residential uses in the province of Ontario and the country.

Canadian Funding Corp links you to Spencer Creek on YouTube.

Canadian Funding Corp links you to a high LTV loan.