On April 18, Canada’s national banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), released its second Annual Risk Outlook (ARO), outlining what it believes are the most significant headwinds facing the Canadian financial system – and what the regulator plans on doing about it. According to the report, the severe downturn in […]

Home prices continued to decline across the country in July, according to Canadian Real Estate Association data released Wednesday. The Ottawa-based group said the average price of a home sold last month was $353,147, a decline of 2% from a year earlier. The year-over-year decline in June was 0.8%. “Prices are off their recent peaks […]

Hello everyone For the 4th time in 4 years there are more changes today in the mortgage industry. The federal government has been warning Canadians that the household debt is getting out of control and it hit a record high of 152% of household income last year.  Due to this the following changes have been […]

Lately the insurers have not been following their guidelines to the letter. They are making their decisions based more on the whole deal, rather than the debt service ratios and it is making it more difficult to give pre-approvals. The lenders are approving the applications but the insurers are declining because they “feel” there is […]

Some more positive news regarding the upcoming months. Victoria’s real estate market is flooded with listings and 5 year Fixed mortgage rates are extremely low, with the Variable rate mortgages at a low risk choice as well.   By Christopher S. Rugaber,Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press WASHINGTON – Farewell and good riddance to the first […]

There stll seems to be some hesitation in the Victoria real estate market. Fixed and Variable rate are incredibly low and the amount of inventory on the market is staggering, and the average price for a home is increasing. What are people waiting for? It could be all the negative news that is spewing out […]

I heard today, on 2 separate occations, people thinking that they need more than 5% of the purchase price as a down payment on a house or condo. With the changes CMHC made this year and in 2010, I guess some people are confused. The changes were made to the amortization, or the length of […]

The fixed rates may be coming down a little more, RBC finally lowered their 5 year fixed rate by 10 basis points. Their mortgage rates are still much higher than other non branch lenders though. The variable rates are still constant at Prime minus .75% or better. An article yesterday stated that sales numbers have dropped […]

In the last week the big banks have increased their 5 year fixed mortgage rates by 30 basis points. The bond rates have increased by only 10 basis points. It looks like the banks are trying to increase their earnings by charging their clients more when it doesn’t look like they need to. How much […]

The Bank of Canada held its lending rate this morning as expected. The state of the rest of the world’s economy being the most significant reason for not tightening up the monetary policy. The quote below leaves the decision unknown for April’s meeting. It was expected that they would increase their lending rate in April […]