News, Views and Trends!
Earlier this year, I voiced my disagreement with the real estate pessimists who said a real estate crash or bubble was forming. Click here to read more.
This same more positive outlook is backed up by CMHC’s latest Housing Market Insight report for Ontario courtesy of regional economist Ted Tsiakopoulos.
Below are some key highlights from CMHC’s report:
Continue reading “Real Estate Rebounds in June as Expected!”
Rental vacancies are ridiculously low and demand for rental units is high… and growing!
That’s just a sampling of the opportunistic real estate investment news Ted Tsiakopoulos, CMHC’s Regional Economist for Ontario, shared recently at the Canadian Mortgage Brokers’ Association (CMBA) of Ontario annual conference.
Here are other main takeaways:
Continue reading “Ontario Housing Market: Increased Opportunity for Investors!”
Canada’s a nation of immigrants. It truly is the land of opportunity. Chances are, your parents, grandparents or great grandparents came here from another country.
There are many reasons why people left their homeland. Some left by choice to pursue a better life. Others had to leave for safety reasons. Whatever the reason, most of us have a common goal: A better life.
Homeownership has always been an important part of that dream. We want to own something. We want to plant roots. There’s a pile of statistics to support this claim. In my 28 years in the financial services industry, I can attest to this claim.
Continue reading “Yes, you can still buy a home in Canada… Keeping the dream alive”
I’m often asked why I started this site. It’s simple: I was tired of reading misinformation and twisted truths about mortgage brokering in Canada.
Back in 2009 when I created the site, there were some new blogs reporting on mortgage trends and offering ‘expert’ advice. (I use the term ‘expert’ loosely.) In reality, these sites were full of misinformation. The information was even damaging to the mortgage brokering landscape, in many cases… yet, they were being quoted by our largest newspapers and TV news channels. Wow! How can the major newspapers print this stuff?? It made me angry.
At the same time, there were rate shopping sites being launched. You know the ones… they compare bank, credit union and mortgage broker rates. These sites promised to compare rates, with no strings attached and tell you which provider has the lowest rate. They were supposed to be totally unbiased. They were supposed to be market neutral. Hey, don’t get me wrong, everyone loves to compare, shop and save, right? Comparing is part of being a smart consumer… but there is this huge problem… These sites are NOT unbiased or neutral. These sites are NOT run or owned by independent people.
You would expect a product review site to be neutral and unbiased, right? I mean, it just makes sense. If I want to compare hotels or vacation destinations, I’ll go to a site like TripAdvisor or Booking.com. We can clearly view the best available price and past customer experiences. We wouldn’t expect TripAdvisor or Booking.com to own the hotels or airlines they were advertising. That would be a conflict of interest.
Continue reading “Why I started this site… 400+ articles later”
Much has been written about the Canadian housing market. Even more about greater Toronto and Vancouver. The pessimists are waiting for a collapse. The optimists are hoping the prices keep going up. Then there’s the realists. They would like to see the market slow and maybe even for prices to go down, so that we don’t have a housing bubble. Which one are you?
When it comes to the housing market, I’m a realist.
Every Spring, for the last 10+ years, the real estate market in Canada heats up. Prices increase, they sell faster, and supply can’t keep up with demand. It’s become the norm. In June, July and August, the market gets very quiet and prices go down. That’s right, they actually go down.
This year was no different except for 2 things.. Supply was very low in January, February and March, causing selling prices to jump as much as 20% over last year in some markets. Now, let’s look more closely.. Continue reading “Housing market is active but will slow in summer as it ALWAYS does..”
