Canadian home prises are rising because prices not interest rates are falling. A shift is taking hold in Canada’s housing market, subtle enough to be missed in the noise yet powerful in its implications. Signals from July suggest a recalibration in the balance between buyer resolve and seller ambition.National home sales climbed 3.8 per cent from June, marking the fourth straight month ...

Key Mortgage Trends and Insights:   The trend continues... New Construction properties purchased many years ago are appraising for values that are much lower than that of the purchase price This is an extremely tough situation, however, there are many different solutions and lenders available Lenders are lowering rates, but some are tightening credit policies and lending criteria. F ...

It seems Canada’s resilient housing market is finally meeting a storm it can’t immediately weather. In CREA’s February 2025 data, we saw home sales plunge dramatically—almost as if the market collectively paused to reflect.  Is this surprising? Not really. It’s a reaction many predicted as the trade war with the United States continues to escalate, throwin ...

Elan's Mortgage Minute: This newsletter is designed to provide mortgage insights to help you better understand your options whether you’re a 1st time home buyerlooking to upgrade from your current home and "break your mortgage" or remortgage when it comes due.   Key Trends and Insights: The big question homeowners and buyers are asking: FIXED OR VARIABLE The simple answer is - it ...

Why Land Lease Homes in a Lifestyle Community may be a Good Investment Hi and welcome to The Next Chapter podcast… where we delve into another of the 130+ topics in our new book. You know… if there’s one thing Monika and I have learned… both personally…  and through the thousands of hours of face-to-face conversations with our clients over the past 30 years, ...

Why Having a Plan B Can Crash-Proof Your Life Hi and welcome to The Next Chapter podcast… where we delve into one of the 130+ topics in our new book. You know… if there’s one thing Monika and I have learned… both personally… and through the thousands of hours of face-to-face conversations with our clients over the past 30 years, it’s that… in life, w ...

Hi and welcome to The Next Chapter podcast… where we delve into one of the 130+ topics in our new book. You know… if there’s one thing Monika and I have learned… both personally… and through the thousands of hours of face-to-face conversations with our clients over the past 30 years, it’s that… in life, what happens to us and around us may not be our ...

Key Trends and Insights: The mortgage renewal "TIDAL WAVE" is coming!  In short, many Canadians received ultra-low "COVID" rates during 2020/2021 - and now 5 years has passed... Crazy, eh?!   Obviously, borrowers will not be renewing their mortgage at 1.29%F - the renewal rates will be ~3x higher Even though the Bank of Canada will likely reduce rates in December and January, ...

TIME… HOW WE VALUE IT, INVEST IT, SPEND IT AND BANK IT Time and how we value it has been a very intriguing topic based on feedback from our readers. This is one of 130 topics addressed in our most recent book (pages 42 – 45) THE NEXT CHAPTER – CHANGE THE MINDSET, CHANGE YOUR LIFE - for all online book retailers - https://www.thenextchapter.fyi/buy-book  When asked ab ...

What's the difference and which one is right for you? When applying for a mortgage, buyers have to make a lot of decisions about exactly what sort of agreement they want to reach with their lender. It’s an important step in the process and can take some time to complete, but after all that work, you can happily live in your home while you work down your principal with mortgage payments. Th ...

In a recent article, we looked at how the Bank of Canada's policy rate affects other banks' prime rates and what it means for borrowers. The bank's interest rate impacts a lot of what happens in the Canadian financial system, but it isn't the only important variable that investors should know about. Another common figure that plays a role in the market is what is known as bond yields. T ...

These days, everyone has their eyes on the Bank of Canada as they are in the progress of gradually raising interest rates. As the Bank of Canada rate goes up, so do mortgage rates, which affects anyone who has a mortgage in Canada. You may be wondering how that change actually happens. After all, you probably have a mortgage with one of Canada's big banks, not the central bank. How come the centr ...

With all the talk about house prices, have you ever stopped to wonder just how exactly home prices are actually determined? On a foundational level, we know that land itself has some inherent value due to its scarcity. Then there is the impact of the market where similar houses are compared at price against one another as they fluctuate in value. But, without just guessing based on the market, how ...

One of the most valuable aspects of real estate is the very land itself, so why not just buy land on its own? As the old saying goes, they aren't making any more of it. Though buying vacant land can be exciting for the potential it offers for development, it also offers the potential for you to be taxed. Indeed, like any real estate ownership, you may need to pay taxes when you buy, own, ...

An Ottawa professor and Smart Prosperity Institute director thinks one of the reasons is there's no where for them to go. With baby boomers having an increasingly difficult time downsizing their homes, this new emerging factor may be having an impact on the price and availability of housing. “We aren’t seeing the generational turnover of homes that I think many municipal planners had ...

If you’re interested in building a home or another kind of building in Canada, your first step will be to buy land. Though vacant land is generally less expensive than properties with existing structures, it can still cost quite a lot of money. This is particularly true for large plots of land or land in very desirable locations.   Luckily, just like you can get a mortgage for a home, ...

How a new exterior paint color can boost the curb appeal of your home If you’re looking to sell your house and make the most out of the sale, you can do so by boosting the exterior’s curb appeal. This can be done in a few different ways, including giving your house a completely different color. An enhanced curb appeal can make your house sell faster It’s not just the interior ...

The well-known myth of the American dream is owning a house is the suburbs with your white picket fence. Nowadays, homeownership can feel like a faraway dream for many young people. The real estate market in Ontario (or even just across Canada) has seen a significant boom in sales prices over the last couple of years, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. House hunting became less about finding wh ...

Tiny houses have become more popular, but there are plenty of challenges to building them With housing prices continuing to climb and supply plummeting, finding your dream home is getting harder and harder. So what if, instead of dreaming big, prospective homeowners set their sights on something smaller? Tiny homes, generally anywhere between 100 and 400 square feet in area, have become a t ...

Only two days after the worst snowfall in living memory in southern Ontario, where cities were draped with as much as two feet of heavy snow in just five hours (and which turned to ice a day later), bylaw officers were reportedly seen on the prowl taking photographs of residential rental properties that didn’t have their sidewalks cleared. With municipalities seemingly always looking for wa ...