Real Estate’s Double-Edged Sword It’s easy to forget the power of leverage. With $100,000 of income, a creditworthy borrower can now qualify for almost three times the mortgage they did in the early 1980s. Decades of falling interest rates and expanding credit availability have made that possible, while acting as a giant lever for home […]

The Latest in Mortgage News: BoC Deputy Governor Says Rate Hikes Could Come Later Than Expected Financial markets may be pricing in the first interest rate hikes as early as March, but they shouldn’t be too confident about that timing. That was the message from Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri during a question […]

How a Mortgage Pre-Approval Can Protect You from Rising Rates Over the past month, we have seen several fixed mortgage rate hikes from the banks and other lenders. Whereas rates below 2% were readily available one month ago for most uninsured 5-year fixed mortgages, the average is now around 2.79% at most banks. We all suspected rates […]

Home Sales Remain Strong in Big Cities as Demand Outstrips Supply Housing inventory continued to fall well short of demand last month in most of Canada’s largest cities. October numbers from some key regional real estate boards show no slowdown in housing demand as new listings continue to dry up and prices continued to rise. […]

Fixed Mortgage Rates Set to Climb Higher as Bond Yields Take Off Bond yields rocketed higher following today’s Bank of Canada rate decision, making it likely that fixed mortgage rates will continue to rise. The Bank acknowledged growing inflation concerns, saying the factors pushing prices up are “stronger and more persistent than expected.” “The Bank […]

Prices are Rising Everywhere–Transitory Can Last A Long Time   Today’s release of the September Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Canada showed year-over-year (y/y) inflation rising from 4.1% in August to 4.4%, its highest level since February 2003. Excluding gasoline, the CPI rose 3.5% y/y last month. The monthly CPI rose 0.2% in September, at the same […]

Canadian Home Prices Continued to Rise As Insufficient Supply Creates Excess Demand Today the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) released statistics showing national existing-home sales rose 0.9% between August and September 2021, posting the first monthly gain since March (see chart below). On a year-over-year (y-o-y) basis, the number of transactions last month was down 17.5%. Nevertheless, […]

National Home Prices Rose in September as Supply Tightened The national average home price re-accelerated in September, returning to a level last seen in May, while housing supply continued to trend down. The average selling price in September was $686,650, up 13.9% year-over-year and 3.5% from July’s reading of $663,500. Removing the high-priced markets of […]

Sales Up in Most Cities with Busier Fall Homebuying Season Underway Following a summer slowdown in home sales, activity started to pick up again in the country’s largest cities as the typically busier fall homebuying season kicked off in September. “Every year, we generally see an uptick in sales, average selling price and listings after Labour […]

The Latest in Mortgage News: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to Buy HomeEquity Bank The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board has taken a major investment stake in Canada’s rapidly growing reverse mortgage market with its acquisition of HomeEquity Bank. Ontario Teachers’, the largest single-profession pension plan in Canada with over $227 billion in assets, announced Wednesday […]