quote:

Originally posted by exstasie The only thing I was getting at was that you can purchase a house with as little as 5% down, and in same cases not even that much.

Up until recently in Canada people could buy homes with 0% down and still get high-ratio insurance on the mortgage (CMHC, Genworth, etc). Some lenders even offered negative-down mortgages where you could mortgage up to 110% of the value of the home (this was VERY common in the USA, and was available for a long period of time, whereas in Canada it was a more recent concept [<5 years]).

Also, US mortgages have longer amortization periods (up to 50 years in some case) - which IMO is a good idea as it gets more people owning homes. Canada was never this high, and 30-35 year amortizations were a relatively new concept (much like the 100+% financing).

5% purchases were (and still are) possible in Canada when buying resale homes. New builders require more due to the fact they need to finance construction costs.

Thanks to the conservative government 0% mortgages and amortizations above 30 years (?) are now uninsurable (CMHC said they wouldn't insure and the others followed suit).

The last thing to realize is in the USA, a portion of mortgage interest can be deducted against income to reduce taxes - which in concept should make it easier for one to buy a home. In reality however this only drove the home prices up (a $500k home in Canada is equal to a $800-900k home in the USA). The original idea was to give people the ability to buy a home with lower incomes but it had somewhat of the opposite impact as it drove prices artificially higher (in the more distant past) plus inflated a market in a time of easy credit (in the more recent past).

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- rabbit.joker [funny¿rabbit] | www.rabbitjoker.com |www.ddtt.org

Dark Dirty Tech Tribal. | Hands in air (trance) and feet on the floor (house).

quote:

Originally posted by Dr. DAS I am now a statistic...got laid off.

Sorry to hear that Dave Big hug xx

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Be the best person you can be. Always.

i really don't want to stay in school forever but it looks like doing that is one of the only options.

companies aren't going to hire people without experience when there is a million people with experience looking for the same positions.

What are you looking for Marg?

We fired someone for cause today. Still sucks.

What are you looking for Marg?

We fired someone for cause today. Still sucks.

A few years ago the company I worked for had several rounds of layoffs over a year and finally my luck ran out and they laid off me and most of the 60 people on my floor.

"Your services are no longer required" - that's the line the boss read to everyone, really original!

Wierd thing is the week before I got laid off headhunters were still calling trying to hire me for other companies. After I got laid off they weren't interested, it was like I had the plague, people treat you like you have a disease they might catch! Other people said the same thing happened to them.

Company was so stupid that within 2 weeks they realized they chopped too many people so they actually hired back some of the same people they laid off, after needlessly paying some over $10,000 in severance pay.

Anyway lottsa luck to the newly unemployed.

I switched jobs a few years back and 3 days later my old team was entirely outsourced to India. Dodged the bullet on that one BIG TIME.

No idea what's going on today. Rumor has it that we are loosing like 200 people. Already 1 girl has left my team like 5 from my department. This is such a shitty day. I can't believe it's only 10:30... its going to be a long day.

*Nervous*

I was just about to search for this thread, and thank you for bumping it for my convenience.


I got this email last night from our CEO;

quote:

So we are going to take action. We have decided to further variablize our cost structure by reducing base pay and some benefits across HP. My base pay will be reduced by 20 percent. The base pay of Executive Council members will be reduced by 15 percent. The base pay of other executives will be reduced by 10 percent. The base pay of all other exempt employees will be reduced by 5 percent. For non-exempt employees, base pay will be reduced by two-and-a-half percent. Additional efficiencies, including changes to the US 401(k) plan and the share ownership plan, will also be implemented. Of course, the implementation of all of these actions is subject to compliance with local laws and regulations. Follow-up communications will detail the timing and the plans in your location."

I already volunteered for 10 unpaid days this year (10 long weekends this summer, how selfish of me) which is a 5% pay cut, and now this additional mandatory 5% cut just blows, and I have to work through it too.

Days like this I wish there was work-to-rule in the salaried private sector, not gonna happen

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Short time TA, Long time Guver, Good time giver.

Yeah i know what a lot of you guys are going through my dad works in the auto industry, and he's a supervisor and he got laid off for a month and is not on 4 day work weeks

Me on the other hand were raising the base rate at my job in april and again in october and they told us that there would be no layoffs as we grew as a company last year. I'm really thankfull that in these hard times i have job security.

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No complaints here.

We are hiring 3,000 in the next year

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Marco V is the MAN!!!!!