The new world of mortgage amortizations
Posted on May 28, 2023
The lyrics of a once-popular song could be applied to mortgages: “…we all got ‘em…what do we do with ‘em?”
What to do with a mortgage has become more important than ever since the pandemic, and since the unprecedented increase in interest rates. And what more and more Canadians are doing is getting a mortgage with a longer amortization.
As in more t...
Vancouver’s West End to get own twin towers
Posted on May 21, 2023
Long reputed to have the most people per square kilometer of any part of Canada, Vancouver’s West End will be increasing its densification with this month’s approval for the building of two high rises.
They are being called the twin towers, although one will be 56 storeys tall and the other 59, and they’ll go up where Barclay Street intersects with...
RBC projecting real estate market on the way up
Posted on May 14, 2023
Market watchers will be interested in what the Royal Bank of Canada’s chief economists had to say this month — that the Canadian housing market had run its course and it appears “a cyclical bottom has been reached.”
RBC attributed this to increase in both activity and prices despite the fact that inventories remain low pretty much across the country...
Comprehensive theory of affordable housing in Vancouver
Posted on May 10, 2023
The subject of “affordable housing in big cities” is everywhere now, and it’s a challenge to try and sort through all the theories to address increasing a city’s density and at the same time keeping the cost of “living” there in check.
Housing prices in Vancouver are always in the news because it traditionally is ranked among the “world’s most expen...
National Bank of Canada study: housing prices rising
Posted on Apr 25, 2023
This headline in The National Post catches the attention of anybody involved or about to be involved in the housing market:
“Housing prices rise month over month for the first time in 10 months”
The source of this mildly optimistic outlook is the National Bank of Canada and it’s based on the monthly Teranet-National Bank Composite Home Price Index...
Underused Housing Tax deadline April 30
Posted on Apr 17, 2023
It’s almost “tax time” and in the interests of helping homeowners avoid the unexpected, you should know about a new tax that could — repeat, could — apply to some homeowners. It’s called the Underused Housing Tax Act (UHT for short) and residential property owners can be categorized into two classifications — excluded owners and affected owners.
To...