Personal Choice

First-Time Home Buyer Incentive now available The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive helps qualified first-time homebuyers reduce their monthly mortgage payments without adding to their financial burdens. The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive is a shared-equity mortgage with the Government of Canada. It offers: 5% or 10% for a first-time buyer’s purchase of a newly constructed home […]

Bank of Canada maintains overnight rate target at 1 ¾ per cent The Bank of Canada today maintained its target for the overnight rate at 1 ¾ per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 2 per cent and the deposit rate is 1 ½ per cent. Recent Canadian economic data are in line with the […]

Budget 2019 To help make homeownership more affordable for first-time home buyers, Budget 2019 introduces the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive. The Incentive would allow eligible first-time home buyers who have the minimum down payment for an insured mortgage to apply to finance a portion of their home purchase through a shared equity mortgage with Canada […]

Women of core working-age leading employment growth In 2018, employment increased by 163,000 or 0.9%. This pace of growth was slower compared with 2017 (+2.3%) and 2016 (+1.2%). Over the course of the year, the unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 5.6%—the lowest rate since comparable data became available in January 1976. Full-time employment […]

CREA Updates Resale Housing Market Forecast The new mortgage stress test announced last October had been expected to cause homebuyers to rush purchases in advance of the new rules coming into effect in January and for the “pull-forward” of sales activity to result in fewer transactions in the first half of 2018. Evidence suggests the […]

Now that Canada’s new mortgage stress test rules have been in place since January 1, arming home buyers with a best practices tool kit is in order. Introduced by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OFSI), the new stress test requires the qualifying rate for an uninsured mortgage to be the greater of […]