From the category archives:

Mortgage

Recently, there have been a couple of interesting articles about foreclosures in the media. Vancouver foreclosures can be a great opportunity in today’s real estate market. As a result of the current economic climate, they are also on the rise offering options to the patient buyer.
The law on foreclosures is different in each province. They [...]

{ 0 comments }

I wrote last week about how we are seeing the credit crunch (originating in the US but now expanding globally) affect us here on the local level in the Vancouver real estate market. There have been further developments in the last week on this issue.
First of all, I commented last time that the Bank of [...]

{ 0 comments }

Last week the Bank of Canada lowered it’s overnight lending rate by -0.5%. Typically, Canadian financial institutions follow suit by matching the change in their prime lending rate. Instead, the Canadian banks lowered their prime lending rates by only 0.25%. The banks have essentially padded their own profits as a result. They are charging customers [...]

{ 0 comments }

I’m a bit late in referring to this, but I thought that it was better late than never. Last week, the Federal government announced that they were putting a halt to guaranteeing the 40-year and zero-down mortgages. They hope to avoid the type of housing crisis that we’ve seen in the US that’s been caused [...]

{ 1 comment }

Mortgage Interest Rates Likely To Rise Modestly

by Sebastian on June 12, 2008

On Tuesday, June 10th 2008 the Bank of Canada announced it’s decision to leave its target for the overnight lending rate at 3% and the bank lending rate at 3.25%. The Bank surprised most observers by leaving rates unchanged and cited concerns about rising inflation for this change in it’s policy (find the full press [...]

{ 0 comments }

Bank of Canada Reduces Key Interest Rate

by Sebastian on January 24, 2008

On Tuesday, the Bank of Canada announced that it was reducing its key interest rate by a quarter point.
Because of sharp declines in Canada’s stock market and the increasing fears over the state of the US economy the Bank of Canada was motivated to cut its key interest rate on Tuesday for the second consecutive [...]

{ 0 comments }

I find that there is a lot of confusion out there about what the Property Transfer Tax (PTT) is and who has to pay for it. With that in mind, I thought that I would try and clarify a few things.
The PTT is a tax imposed by the Provincial government on all transactions of property. [...]

{ 1 comment }

Mortgage Interest Rates Rising

by Sebastian on June 22, 2007

We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the lending rates on mortgages over the past month. In that time, there has been almost a full-percentage point gain. We haven’t seen that type of movement for a very long time.
 How is this affecting real estate in Vancouver? So far, there hasn’t been much of an affect that [...]

{ 0 comments }