The Canadian government is monitoring whether tougher mortgage rules are having the desired effect but doesn’t favour allowing longer mortgage terms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. Trudeau, speaking to an industry group Thursday, was asked about raising the maximum amortization of a mortgage to 30 years, from 25 years, for first-time buyers. The prime minister […]

Canada posted a record job gain last month, along with a decline in the jobless rate and a pick-up in wages, providing the strongest signal yet that the economy is coming out of a six-month slowdown. Other data this week portend a rebound in economic activity, including a strong bounce-back in exports and a surge […]

Foreign Investment in Montreal’s property market surged a whopping 183% in 2018 over the previous year—the likely the result of foreign buyer taxes in Toronto and Vancouver. “It’s not a coincidence that after the foreign investor taxes in Toronto and Vancouver, interest moved to the Montreal market,” said Altus Group’s Senior Director of Innovation and […]

The Bank of Canada will announce its April interest rate decision next week but a survey shows little expectation that it will make a change. Nine out of 10 economists including those from TD, Laurentian, the Conference Board of Canada and University of Manitoba – expect that the BoC will leave rates unchanged at 1.75%. […]

The International Monetary Fund has expressed concern about rising risk in the Canadian housing market. The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says that the risk has grown over the past two years and is near to levels seen during the financial crisis of the last decade. However, there’s a major difference between then and now; […]

The employment report had long been a lone bright spot in an economy that had sunk across the board, so the March slump is not surprising. According to today’s jobs report from Statistics Canada, employment fell by 7,200 last month, mostly in full-time positions in the service sector. Canada’s jobless rate held steady at 5.8%, […]

The current decline in the bonds market is good news for Canadian fixed-rate mortgage borrowers with rates heading lower. As the bond market yields invert – as they did Monday in Canada – the cost to banks of borrowing in the market declines, meaning they are able to finance mortgages at a lower rate and […]

A major item from this week’s federal budget will further reduce, rather than enhance, affordability for first-time homebuyers. The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive—in which the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation will provide up to 10% on the purchase price of a new build and 5% on a resale—caps household income at $120,000. The policy further […]

In its fourth fiscal plan, the Trudeau government spent its entire revenue windfall leaving the deficit projection little changed. In this election budget, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced $22.8 billion over six years in new spending initiative mostly for homebuyers, students and seniors. Trudeau promised in his first budget to have eliminated all red ink […]

Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show that national home sales dropped sharply from January to February, plummeting 9.1% to its lowest level since November 2012. The month-over-month decline was the biggest since the B-20 stress test was introduced in January of last year. The number of existing home sales was […]