Are our Home Prices in GTA going up or Down in 2008?

Is the US housing mess likely to impact the value of our homes? You decide. Here are two weekend articles

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080118.wcover19/BNStory/robNews/home
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080118/recession_housing_080118/20080120?hub=TopStories

My Take:

Will it happen here? When interest and stock prices go down, gold and homes price go up. Gold prices have gone up but homes prices are steady. Yes demand is high. Thanks to influx of immigrants in Ontario, recently they seem to be going more to Alberta :(

US is going though a recession for sure, chances are it will effect those Canadian states that depend on US markets. Like Ontario, our manufacturing base services mainly the US market. All our other industries service those industries that depend on US market. So how do we know the US recession is beginning to bite us? It depends largely how the Ontario retail price index behaves. If people fear loosing their jobs, they spend less on non essentials & CPI goes down. I am looking at it right now it seems down, interest is likely to go down soon. It will free up a lot of easy credit which should spur spending and home buying. If the interest rate goes down but the CPI does not rise, due to prevalent fears of lay offs, then maybe the home prices will get hit. I am going to keep looking hard at the retail price index.

I am generally not wrong. Last year in October when gold was $715, I said Gold will rise dramatically today Gold is $876. I know, few of us made money.

Some hard facts of current US real estate market:

* Subprime loans don't exist in Canada, (only 5%) but they have been around in the U.S. for decades. They were initially intended to help wealthy people buy second properties. But unscrupulous mortgage brokers abused it.

* Predatory mortgage brokers targeted inner-city, African-American neighbourhoods, where they fudged property values and signed up thousands of borrowers without explaining the details of the loans. A study by the Housing Research & Advocacy Center, a non-profit group based in Cleveland, found that in 2005 nearly 60 per cent of all mortgages taken out by African Americans in the city were "high-cost loans" — compared with about 34 per cent of those taken out by whites. Hue and cry broke when it started impacting whites.
* Normally in US, 800k homes are listed for sale under foreclosure, currently there are 3.2 million foreclosure

* A home selling in Detroit for $830 last year, now listed for $470k. Prices have slashed by 50% in some areas
* A large number of vacant home are stripped bare by looters for their copper and electrical fittings
* Street after streets of vacant homes are being demolished by the city, they fear they will used as drug grow houses or for other criminal use

Thank you for your response and feedback.