CategoryReal Estate news

Ask the mortgage expert: How to buy a home in 2026, between budgets, builders, and opportunities

Every year, homebuyers across Canada hold out for the silver bullet—a policy change that will suddenly make the path to homeownership clearer.

From tax reforms to supply-side stimulus, the landscape is changing. The question is: Are these changes enough to bridge the gap between supply and demand, and how can you leverage them to your advantage?

While there is rarely a single “fix” for a market as complex as ours, the most recent budget cycles and policy updates have introduced significant shifts that every homebuyer needs to understand. Continue Reading ….

I hope you will enjoy this article and if you have any questions or would like to discuss I am always available.

Your best interest is my only interest. I reply to all questions and I welcome your comments. Like this article? Share with a friend.

Steve Garganis: 416-224-0114; steve@canadamortgagenews.

Posted 2 weeks ago Bank News

Canada Housing disaster 2025: The Great Canadian Shell Game

If you’ve been waiting for a miracle in the Canadian housing market, I hope you like waiting. Despite the “bold” headlines coming out of Ottawa and the provinces, the average Canadian is still getting squeezed until the pips squeak.

I thought it was time to do an annual review on how our governments performed in 2025 regarding the housing shortage crisis. The quick assessment? It is a failure of math, policy, and will.

We’ve had a new budget, a new “housing czar” approach from the Federal Government, and a lot of expensive-looking agencies. But let’s look at the numbers—because the numbers don’t lie, even if the politicians do.

Posted October 6, 20254 Comments Mortgage News

The Condo Carnage Is Real.. but is it over?

Let’s call this what it is: a day of reckoning. The great Canadian condo delusion, a mass psychosis fueled by cheap money and a fear of missing out, is over. The speculative fever has broken, leaving a trail of financial devastation in its wake. For years, an entire generation was told that buying a condo—any condo, at any price—was the only path to prosperity. They were wrong. Dead wrong. And now, the carnage from that spectacular miscalculation is creating the single greatest buying opportunity we’ve seen in decades.

The numbers don’t just tell a story; they scream it from the rooftops. In the Greater Toronto Area, sales volumes haven’t just dipped; they’ve cratered, falling a gut-wrenching 60% from the peak. In the first quarter of this year, a paltry 1,800 new condo units were sold across the entire GTHA. Let that sink in. We haven’t seen a number that terrifyingly low since 1995. This isn’t a slowdown; it’s a full-blown market seizure, a cardiac arrest of consumer confidence.

Posted September 30, 20252 Comments Bank News

Our Leaders Are Rolling Up Their Sleeves… To Wave the White Flag

Another week, another series of baffling decisions from Ottawa that leave you wondering what reality our leaders are living in. On September 17th, the Bank of Canada, in a move that surprised no one paying attention to our sputtering economy, chopped its overnight rate by another quarter-point. While this offers a sliver of relief for those of us with variable-rate debt, it’s a glaring admission that the economic engine is stalling.

But the real headline came a few days later, on September 23rd, when Governor Tiff Macklem delivered a speech titled, “Time to Roll up our sleeves.” You’d think that would be a call to action, a rallying cry for Canadian industry. Instead, it felt more like a blueprint for surrender.

A DANGEROUS PIVOT FROM OUR GREATEST ALLY

Governor Macklem’s big idea? After 15 years of dithering, he’s decided Canada has relied too much on the United States. His solution is to now, finally, forge “stronger trade relations” with Europe and, get this, China.

Posted September 26, 2025 Finance

The $13 Billion Question: Will Ottawa’s “Build Canada Homes” Fix Our Broken Housing Market, or Just Build More Problems?

Another week, another blockbuster announcement from Ottawa aimed at solving our national housing crisis. This time, it’s a shiny new federal agency dubbed “Build Canada Homes,” launched with a cool $13 billion of your money. The promise? To slice through the red tape, leverage public lands, and finally start building the affordable homes that Canadians are so desperately crying out for. On the surface, it sounds like the cavalry cresting the hill. But as anyone who’s been in the real estate and mortgage game as long as I have knows, the devil is always in the details. And in this case, the details are as sparse as a downtown Toronto parking spot.

So, let’s peel back the layers of this government onion and see if it brings tears of joy or sorrow. What is this program really going to do?

THE GRAND PLAN: PUBLIC LANDS, PREFAB HOMES, AND A WHOLE LOT OF HOPE

The core idea behind Build Canada Homes is for the federal government to become a master developer. They’re planning to use vast swaths of public land – we’re talking about 88 federal properties spanning 463 hectares, roughly the size of downtown Ottawa – to build everything from high-rise apartments to single-family homes. The initial rollout is slated for six cities: Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, with a first-phase target of 4,000 factory-built homes.