Brokers are divided on whether they feel Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stepping down would benefit the mortgage industry, despite the finance minister’s history of instituting unpopular mortgage measures meant to cool the market.
Brokers are divided on whether they feel Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stepping down would benefit the mortgage industry, despite the finance minister’s history of instituting unpopular mortgage measures meant to cool the market.
“There aren’t too many changes they can make anyway; we’re pretty much at the point where they have stripped it down to where it was a decade ago or even farther back,” Len Lane of Verico Brokers for Life told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “I guess it’s better to keep somebody we know than to have someone else.”
MortgageBrokerNews.ca ran a poll asking its readers whether Jim Flaherty stepping down from his post as Finance Minister would be preferable. And opinions were almost completely divided, with 46 per cent preferring the incumbent to run again.
For his part, Flaherty has hemmed and hawed when asked about his political future; expressing both a desire to run again and then, most recently, that he is unsure whether or not he would run in 2015.
“We’ll see,” Flaherty said at a meeting of G20 finance ministers, according to Reuters. “I haven’t decided.”
Flaherty, of course, has made a number of mortgage rule changes; the most recent of which occurring in the summer of 2012.
And although the changes have been unpopular, brokers may feel more comfortable with the incumbent minister than an alternative.
“In my own opinion, I believe that Jim Flaherty does a relatively decent job as Finance Minister, he tightens the mortgage rules because he does not want to see a financial crisis similar to the Americans in 2008,” Angela Wong-Liao of Invis The Money Lady said in the comments section of MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Frankly, PC or Liberal win does not make a big difference but I favor PC because I believe they have more qualified candidates for their cabinet.”
Still, some may wonder what stance a Liberal or NDP candidate may take regarding the housing market.
“I think they have a little more socialist agenda so I think they’d probably be more interested in helping the first-time buyer,” Lane mused.
