The overnight rate held steady yesterday as the Bank of Canada announced that it would maintain its traget of 1 percent. This leaves the prime lending rate at 3 percent. It’s now been more than two years since the prime rate has increased, giving variable rate mortgage holders the upper hand on higher interest costs.
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
Loophole May Make Credit Unions the Better Mortgage Option
New mortgage guidelines aimed at Canada’s sizzling real estate market might not be as ironclad as Finance Minister Mark Carney may have hoped. That’s because credit unions, which are provincially regulated, are not under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). This loophole may provide community credit unions with an important competitive advantage and borrowers … Read More
Consumer Debt Hits A New High
A report released this morning by TransUnion shows that, despite repeated warnings, Canadians are back on the borrowing bandwagon, pushing consumer debt to a new record high. According to the report, the average Canadian’s non-mortgage debt hit $26,221 in the second quarter of 2012, up $192 from the previous quarter. This is the highest per person debt level since the … 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