March is Fraud Prevention Month and the Better Business Bureau has released the Top 10 Scams of 2018. 1. Romance Scams     More than $22.5 million lost Canadians were victimized financially, emotionally, psychologically and socially by this scam. Catphishing through online dating continues to be a very lucrative and seductive business for scammers. Never wire or […]

How does paying 6.59 per cent interest on a mortgage grab you? If that sounds high, it should, because Canada’s average five-year fixed mortgage is only 3.47 per cent. Yet thousands of seniors will pay that higher 6.59 per cent in a reverse mortgage, a loan secured against home equity where you make no payments […]

Under the old residential tenancy rules, a landlord could reject a prospective tenant if they had a pet.  I would suggest to clients that if they wanted the landlord to accept their pet, they could legally offer up a pet damage deposit to move the landlord from a “no” to a “yes”.  It was legal […]

<a href=’http://crea.ca/content/national-average-price-map’><img alt=’ ‘ src=’https://public.tableau.com/static/images/7B/7B9GP6YNT/1_rss.png’ style=’border: none’ /></a> Mouse over each province for pricing…  use the drop down menues for specific areas

Toronto City Council has passed new rules to crack down on short-term rental services such as Airbnb that will restrict listings to principal residences and ban homeowners from listing secondary suites such as basement apartments. The basement-apartment issue dominated what snowballed into a daylong debate at city hall. Banning them from short-term rentals was meant […]

The good news is that the combined effects of higher interest rates and new mortgage rules will see Toronto’s housing market balance out over the course of 2018. The bad news? A serious lack of land supply coupled with a rapidly increasing population means it won’t last. At least, that’s what CIBC Senior Economist Benjamin […]

With a sigh and hesitant pause, Jason Paris confides that in retrospect he wishes he’d done more research before putting down a deposit on the now-defunct Museum FLTS condominium project in Toronto’s trendy Junction Triangle area. The 43-year-old television production manager is one of hundreds of would-be homeowners who recently had their money returned and […]

The housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver could resume their previous upward trajectories amid conditions of tight supply and burgeoning demand, according to a new report from CIBC World Markets. The Canadian housing market, in general, is in an important transition period — especially Vancouver and Toronto, economist Benjamin Tal said in the report, which […]

PayPal has been ordered to provide the Canada Revenue Agency with information about its business account holders. The company says a Federal Court order requires it to supply information about business accounts that received or sent a payment between Jan. 1, 2014, and Nov. 10, 2017. It is not required to provide information about customers […]

More than 1,000 planned purpose-built rental units have instead been converted to condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area since Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government expanded rent control in the spring, according to a new report that warns the region’s rental supply crisis is poised to worsen. The report, which is to be released on Monday and was obtained […]

Intense competition means condos are being rented within 10 days of listing at average rents of $2,219 Ontario’s expanded rent control rules, in place since April, couldn’t stop a 10.3% hike in condo rents over the past year, according to a new study. Condo research firm Urbanation Inc. said Thursday the average index rent in the […]

Rental rush: pension funds flock to apartment buildings After the financial crisis battered the U.S. economy in 2008 and 2009, the real estate investing team at Quebec’s public-sector pension manager noticed an interesting trend in its portfolio of holdings. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec owned a group of apartment buildings in New […]

Toronto house-price slump ends with September rise Greater Toronto home prices jumped in September as buyers appeared to put an end to a slump that began in the spring with government measures to cool a scorching real-estate market. The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) said the average GTA home sold for $775,546 in September, up […]

A Federal Court judge has approved at least one court order that will require a British Columbia developer to turn over information to tax officials about people who bought and flipped condo units before or during construction. And several similar applications are under way, reflecting the federal government’s efforts to crack down on potential tax […]

Toronto’s real estate market is showing renewed strength, with bidding contests and bully offers making a resurgence after a torpid summer. David Fleming of Bosley Real Estate Ltd. was caught off guard when he took his clients to see a house in the Beaches area and soon learned that a bully offer had landed. “I didn’t think it would […]