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Posted by: Garth Chapman
If you are a Snowbird, a Landlord, or you want to know how to safeguard your home during a winter vacation, read on. During extended (more than a few days) absences you want to ensure your home or rental property is protected from damage or loss, and also that your property insurance won’t be void […]
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Well here we are now with a shift in the market and they always seem to come rather suddenly. We have announcements today from a number of lenders that their rates are headed up. This will surely spread to virtually all the banks within days. So what is behind this? 5-year bond yields drive 5-year […]
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Not all mortgages are created equal. In fact most mortgages, even within a single financial institution, will vary from one another. Pre-payment privileges, portability, increased payment and extra payment privileges, payment holidays, and all sorts of other issues come into play. Your own particular needs and desires must be understood by your Mortgage Broker or Banker […]
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Posted by: Garth Chapman
You generally pay the goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) when you purchase a new or substantially renovated residential rental property from a builder. If you are the builder of a residential rental property, or if you make an addition to a multiple-unit residential rental property, you are generally considered to have made a […]
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This is a good article I found on the MoneySense website When you buy real estate you expect that, over time, it will appreciate in value. If you sell that property for more than you paid, you will have an appreciable gain in value and this triggers a taxable capital gain for the Canada Revenue […]
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On your tax return you have the option to depreciate your buildings (to claim CCA). The elements of this to consider include those below, and perhaps others as well. This is both a tax planning decision and a mortgage qualification capacity decision. Claiming the CCA is actually optional and it can be started and stopped […]
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There are not very many Canadians these days who would accept the posted rate for a mortgage, but that doesn’t mean no one should care when the banks drop their posted rates. What’s key about the posted rate is that it is used by the Bank of Canada to create what is called the ‘qualifying rate’. […]
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Ahhh, the good old days. Or were they, economically speaking? Let’s take the early 1980’s as an example. We bought a home in early 1981 near the bottom of the housing crash caused by PE Trudeau’s NEP (National Energy Policy), which dropped that home’s value by about 20% from $111,000 to the $91,000 that we […]
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Your Variable Mortgage Rates are driven by your bank’s Prime Rate which is set individually by each Bank. They normally (but not always) move in sync with changes in the Overnight Rate, which is set by the Bank of Canada (BoC) and is used as a basis for one-day (or “overnight”) borrowing between the major […]
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Canada’s government as been acting since 2009 to tighten mortgage lending requirements in their ongoing efforts to ensure Canadians do not face the ruinous housing collapse endured by Americans and many Europeans since the collapse of 2008. As a signatory to the Basil Accords along with the USA and all the Euro nations Canada’s government […]
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