Toronto

If Tony Robbins and Pitbull come to your town to present you with 'an offer you can't refuse' to buy residential real estate after it's already surged over 200% in the past decade and 30-40% in the last year, that should be all the evidence you need to do the exact opposite.  If, however, you're the type of person that doesn't easily pick up on the 'subtle' market cues then here's a couple more reasons to avoid Toronto real estate at all costs.

http://www.macleans.ca/video/iframe/13639244001/VJjIBwmqg/5389510190001

Shortly after we remarked most recently on the unprecedented Canadian housing bubble that has migrated from Vancouver to Toronto, Gluskin Sheff's Chief Economist David Rosenberg joined the growing chorus of calls for government intervention into the Toronto housing market. In an interview on BNN, Rosenberg, who correctly called the U.S. housing bubble in 2005 when still at Merrill Lynch, said the massive deviation from historical norms has him drawing comparisons between the two situations.

Submitted by Wolf Richter of Wolf Street

Based on fundamentals? You gotta be kidding.

Residential property sales in Greater Toronto soared 17.7% year-over-year to 12,077 homes, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). New listings jumped 15.2% to 17,052. Prices for all types of homes, based on the MLS Home Price Index Composite “Benchmark,” soared 28.6%. The “average” selling price soared 33.2%!

That average selling price of C$916,567 is up from C$688,011 a year ago. Over the past five years, it has doubled!

For months we've been warning about real estate bubbles re-emerging in various markets around the world from Canada to Australia (see "There Are 66,719 Empty Mansions In Vancouver" and "Vancouver Home Sales Crash 40%, As Toronto Home Prices Soar 22%").  And while facts and figures clearly indicate that certain markets are bubbling over courtesy of all the same mistakes that caused the 'great recession' in 2008, nothing helps to confirm the truly obscene nature of a real estate bubble quite like attending a good ole-fashioned, get-rich-quick real estate expo.

Submitted by Roddy Boyd of the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation

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Canadian National Railway Company Inc. is an icon of the Canadian economic firmament whose rapid growth and sector-leading efficiency have made it a money-manager darling. A lengthy SIRF investigation suggests that a fair chunk of that growth has come from price gouging and misleading a key, taxpayer-funded commuter rail customer.