You wouldn’t go skydiving without a parachute, or walk across a tightrope without a safety net, yet thousands of people buy homes in Canada each year without an emergency fund safely tucked away in the bank. When you take out a mortgage with no savings, you’re flirting with disaster. An unexpected job loss, drop in income, home repair, medical situation … Read More
Canadian Housing Market at Tipping Point
According to economists at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada will soon boast a more than 70 percent homeownership rate. The question now is whether or not the nation’s housing market has reached the tipping point (the United States is believed to have cracked the same 70 percent threshold just before the housing bubble burst in 2008). Growing concern over … Read More
How To Save For Your Down Payment
According to a recent TD Canada Trust survey, nearly 60 percent of Canadians were disappointed in the size of their down payment. These findings aren’t all that surprising; in a world of record-setting consumer debt, slim savings and lacklustre investment returns, saving for a sizeable deposit can seem like an exercise in futility. And yet, the bigger your down payment, the less … Read More
RBC Increases Rates And the Argument for Smaller Lenders
The Royal Bank is the first of Canada’s big banks to hike rates, increasing two of its mortgages by one-fifth of a point each this morning. RBC’s posted rate for a three-year, fixed-rate mortgage has increased 0.2 percentage points to 4.05 while their special-offer rate for a five-year closed mortgage rose to 3.69 percent. RBC is the first major commercial … Read More
Understanding Amortization
A shorter amortization period can help you pay off your mortgage faster and save you money. Obvious? Perhaps. So why are more and more people choosing to stretch their amortization as long as possible? The recent changes to Canadian mortgage regulations that limit amortization periods to 25-years have caused a bit of tension across the country as families scramble to … Read More