Sorry Mr. Reaper, we’ve just figured out another way to delay your death grip! Research shows that giving an inheritance to another person while you’re alive – a concept known as “living gifting” – not only feels good, it can promote better physical and mental well-being and even help you live longer. Health researcher and […]

Calling all house hunters! We have a question for you—have you calculated what your mortgage will be? It is all too common for buyers to start house hunting before they truly know what their mortgage payment will work out to each month. This leads to homeowners being in over their heads. We believe in being […]

The mortgage process can seem huge and overwhelming. It can be an emotional process because a mortgage is the loan you are taking to buy a home for yourself and your family which makes it infinitely more than just a loan. Or it may represent the loan you are taking to refinance your home to […]

More than a third of first-time homebuyers in Canada are single. If you’re thinking of joining this group, here’s what you need to do and know before jumping into homeownership. Study the market. Identify neighbourhoods you want to live in and check to see how much properties in that area are selling for. Next, figure […]

We are all familiar with the banks and local credit unions, but what are monoline lenders and why are they in the market? Mono, meaning alone, single or one, these lenders simply provide a single yet refined service: to fulfill mortgage financing as requested. Banks and credit unions, on the other hand, offer an array […]

A sincere thank you to our regulators, Ministers, MP’s, etc. for your concern about my personal debt figures. And thanks for channelling this concern into recent deep and drastic cuts to my personal (home financing) purchasing power. Although certainly chopping Canadian families’ ability to buy a home in today’s rising market by a whopping 20% […]

The human brain struggles with distinguishing between a real or imagined threat. Is it a snake? Or just a shoelace? One may kill us quick, and so we react fast and think it through later… or maybe never. Is the often cited, rarely critiqued, ‘debt-to-income’ ratio a snake or a shoelace? A killer lying in […]

ur Government has concerns about their role with CMHC — essentially a mortgage insurance company — a role in which taxpayers are technically liable for their clients’ actions and behaviour (despite current CMHC premium reserves on hand to withstand up to a 40% market devaluation). These concerns were apparently part of justification used regarding recent […]

During a recent trip to our nation’s Capital with folks from Dominion Lending Centres and other mortgage groups, an Ottawa insider made an interesting comment: “We don’t care about consumer debt, because we don’t guarantee it.” This comment was made in an effort to justify recent increased restrictions placed on borrowers taking out insured mortgages […]