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It’s been a long winter, but the spring housing market is finally here. Hooray! Buying a home for the first time can be intimating, it’s most likely the single biggest financial transaction of your life time, but it doesn’t have to be. By preparing ahead of time, you can help ensure it’s stress free. Here… Read more
Have you taken a look at your home heating bill lately and been shocked at the numbers you see? You’re not alone. Heating your home can be expensive, especially during the coldest time of year, winter. If you feel you’re spending too much money to heat your home, you’re not alone. Luckily, there are ways… Read more
So, you’ve decided to sell your home during the wintertime. You’re probably aware the winter isn’t an ideal time to sell real estate. You’d be better off listing your property during the spring real estate market, right? Not necessarily. Selling your home during the winter has its ups and downs just like any other season.… Read more
In the first article we looked at goal setting. In this week’s article we’re going to take a look at how to save up your down payment sooner with the RRSP and TFSA. Although it may not always seem like it, generally the government wants to encourage homeownership. It does this through various tax breaks… Read more
Happy New Year! My name is Sean Cooper. I’m a personal finance journalist and bestselling author. I’m also known as the “burn your mortgage” guy for when I burned my mortgage papers on national TV three years ago. I’m excited to be writing the first blog post in a series of semi-monthly blog posts on… Read more
Should the RRSP Home Buyers’ Plan (HBP) be expanded and modernized? That’s what the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is proposing. CREA has put forward a number of proposals, the biggest of which is “intergenerational RRSP loans” to help first-time homebuyers. At first glance this seems like a good idea. Home prices are rising fast… Read more
Canada’s banking regulator OSFI (short for Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions) has become quite the water cooler conversation topic these days. “How ‘bout them Blue Jays?” has been replaced with “did you hear about the latest mortgage rule changes?” Although these were perhaps the most anticipated mortgage rule changes in history, there’s still… Read more
The housing market has seen a lot of changes over the past several months. It all started with the new stress test on insured mortgages last year. Then there was Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan in the spring. More recently we’ve seen higher mortgage rates. If that hasn’t been enough changes to get used to, OSFI… Read more
MY HUSBAND AND I bought our first house a few years ago. Before we even closed, we had dreamt of all the imaginative, colourful ways to decorate and renovate our house. We felt prepared, excited, and optimistic. Until we started the actual renovations that is. Like so many other newbie home renovators, we had a VERY steep… Read more
Last week the Ontario Liberals released a 16-point plan ahead of this week’s provincial budget aimed to cool the red-hot real estate market in Toronto. With the premier’s approval rating at a woeful 12 percent and a provincial election set for June 2018, it became too politically costly not to do something. When the government… Read more