$1,555,000. 30 by 103. Toronto. Here.

There are four and a half million people in Boston, where the average house price is less than $340,000. That’s a decent improvement over a year ago. In fact, in the state of Massachusetts, the average house price has nosed above the $300,000 mark for the first time in a year.

Still, the average  is 9% less than last year, and sales are down 2%. Local realtors say the only reason buying has strengthened is because of cheap mortgage rates and a gift of $8,000 that the Obama gang is giving every new home buyer.

I mention this because a business news radio station in Boston asked me to be their guest Thursday on a show devoted to real estate. I received an intro suggesting I might have personally run the Canadian government and written all the books here. Close.

Anyway, here’s the thing they wanted to know: If you guys up there have a real estate bubble, and you saw the disaster that happened to us, why isn’t your government stopping it?

Radio silence.

I mean, how’d ya answer that without sounding like a northern rube?  Say, well, you know we’re different, eh? Or, our banks are a lot smarter than yours?  Or, there’s this border thing that repels your cooties? Or, gosh, you mean you’ve had some housing troubles down there? Or, but we have the Olympics?

In any case, I just stated the obvious: The government has no balls.

Policy-makers including the Bank of Canada and the feds made conscious decisions to inflate our housing market even while yours was taking a dive. They sanctioned long amortizations and zero downpayments, then dropped interest rates to dust, and have a federal agency which buys all the mortgage risk from the banks and transfers it to the taxpayers. As a result, I added in my best Bostonian flat-a accent, today we have mortgages given without income verification, financing extended to people without savings and legions of new home owners who would be under water if prices declined by just 5%.

And that was a shock, for an obvious reason: The Canadians are losing it.

Today 15 million American households have negative equity, and 2.5 million more are about to join them. Fully 58% of all the families in Florida with mortgages, for example, owe more than their houses are worth. Their equity vanished as property values collapsed after being allowed to reach a point of unaffordability. Will cold Canadians not repeat this – at least in part – once the federal gush ends and rates move higher next year?

But this is not really about houses. Instead, it’s the economy.

My Boston buds made it clear to me that there has been nothing – not job losses or stock market chaos included – that has impacted people as much as the stability of their homes.

Between commercials, I was asked another obvious question: Don’t you worry about what’s coming?

Those Americans. Such idiots.

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A quick word to all those people who keep emailing me for ‘evidence’ it is possible to make at least 5% on your money these days: Stop it. Get some advice.

Here are four more words: Canada real return bonds. So far this year, 7.7%.