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“We simply don’t know,” he wrote. “Having all that information is not a sufficient condition for preventing a collapse, but it could be a necessary condition.”

There is general agreement the housing market is now overshooting, he said, but the real test for consumers will come when interest rates begin to rise.

The Bank of Canada is unlikely to let that happen until late 2015, at the earliest. For now, its trendsetting overnight borrowing rate for lending between commercial banks sits at a meager 1% — where it has been since September 2010. But what happens that rate starts to rise and bond price go up and mortgages get more expensive to service?

And that’s just scratching the surface.

“Yes, there is a lack of information,” said David Madani, at Capital Economics.

“From an economist’s point of view, it’s frustrating when you don’t have all this information that you might typically like to see in any other country,” he said. “More information is always better. It’s important normally, and it’s very important now, obviously, because of the booming housing sector.”

“How can you determine the level of rate sensitivity if you do not have information on the distribution of mortgages by actual mortgage rates, the level of down-payment and the distribution of borrowers by their debt service ratio,” asked Mr. Tal.

Banks have access to much of this information, more than the average observer, and those with a bearish opinion on the market are making that call perhaps because they don’t have the same data.