Oil Breaks Through $100 A Barrel & Mortgage Rates Go Up As 5 - Yr Canada Bond Yields Jump 9% In A Week

What to do if you are in the middle of purchasing a home or have a Mortgage Renewal in the next 3 months?

LOCK IN A RATE NOW!

There are a few low rates still around today

2/ But likely gone tomorrow or the next day

I have covered this story before

Oil price up = Inflation up = Canada Bond Yields up = Mortgage Rates up

But what about Variable, which has nothing to do with Bond Yields?

Variable is a Bank of Canada decision

What will BoC do?

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The Trickery Never Ends In Real Estate Sales: Let's List The House The House For $250K Less Than We Will Take

For the last 20 years Residential Real Estate has used some of the worst Sales Tactics

Not every Realtor does this but too many do it endlessly

Fake list prices

2/ For a hundred years Real Estate was sold by offering a house at slightly above the price you wanted & some back & forth negotiations happened & the Buyer & Seller arrived at an acceptable sale price

When GTA house prices went nuts in the early 2000's this concept died

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246 New Construction Homes Sold In The GTA In January: Lowest Since 1981: WTF Is Going On Here?

Lowest in 45 Years? Even Though the Population is more than DOUBLE

This a truly disturbing number

Why is it happening? How did we get here? When will it return to normal?

2/ Let's start with a very important stat: 80% of GTA New Home Sales for the last 8 years are HI-RISE

Therefore if Hi-Rise Development stops New Home Construction stops

Once this Hi-Rise concept is understood the rest of the reasons for the New Home Catastrophe fall in place

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Government Spending At All Levels Has Just Gone Nuts: There's No End In Sight

Government of Canada Deficit: Non-Covid Record High

BC Deficit: All Time High

Manitoba Deficit: All Time High

We all know how big the Deficits are in Ontario & Quebec

Why is this happening?

2/ The answer to this question is in 3 parts:

Because they can

Because spending is easy

Because it's politically beneficial

Let's break it down

There's no Balanced Budget requirement for the Feds & Provinces: most US State Constitutions forbid any Budget Deficits

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Another Day Another Bank Consolidation: Canada With Few Banks Wants To Have Fewer

Just a couple of days after the Fairstone purchase of Laurentian Bank, Equitable Bank aquires PC Financial from Loblaws

It's a smaller transaction but meaningful

It shows a pattern

2/ PC Financial was a good idea 25 years ago

Loblaws had millions of people moving through it's stores every month: why not sell them Financial Services & roll those services into a Loyalty Plan using a brand Loblaws had already spent millions to establish

No Brainer?

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Brampton House Prices Down 31% From Peak: Will It Go Lower? Why Did It Happen?

The TRREB system says Brampton house prices have fallen 31% from Feb 2022 to October 2025

$1.346M to $934K

That's a shit ton of losses, likely another 10% to 15% more to go

WTF Happened?

2/ Power Of Sales Happened

Lenders are taking alot of homes from Borrowers who cannot make mortgage payments & those homes need to be sold FAST

Why so fast?

Because lenders, half of them Private or Alternative Lenders (not banks) need the money back

And don't have a choice

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New Home Construction Collapses In GTA: Very Simple Reason

If every New Construction Home on offer is substantially more expensive than similar Resale Homes so who the hell is buying the New Construction Home

Not just a bit more expensive: 10%, 15% or 20% more expensive

2/ And not just the GTA, all across Ontario

Who is going to pay $1075 a sqft for a Pre-construction Condo if there is massive supply of almost new Resale Condos at $900 a sqft & if you just want until 2026 it's $850 a sqft

And that's just 416

Let's check out other cities

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Ontario Real Estate Market Gets Better Next Year? NOPE Time For A History Lesson

I was around for the last Ontario RE Bubble

History doesn't really repeat itself & nothing is ever a perfect duplicate

But... Similarities are startling

1990 the raging Ontario Market STOPPED

2/ House prices fell & kept falling for years 1996 is generally agreed as the year prices stopped falling

The Ontario Real Estate Market peaked in February 2022

Apply the same calculations: recovery begins 2028

NOT 2026

Let's consider the key factors that continue to drag RE

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We Will See More Aboriginal Land Claims: An Ontario Claim For A Massive River Valley Is Reaching Court Soon

And it's totally insane

Main thing to understand: First Nations don't want the land, they want MONEY

Same in Richmond BC: it's about the money

But it creates havoc

2/ I have posted previously that these Court decisions which create any question regarding the clean Title of any property are damaging to the value of a person's home, impairing lending options & generally disrupting something that should be rock solid: who owns what

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Is The Certainty Of Property Ownership In Danger In British Columbia? MAYBE

The recent BC Cowitchan Band Court Settlement may have turned over ownership of part of Richmond BC to the Aboriginal Band

Is it a done deal? Will people lose their homes? Because it's possible

2/ I am not digging into the Politics on this one although there a lot Politics.

Not going to go on a rant about judges although its obviously a problem

But last week City Of Richmond said that Homeowners may have a problem with Title

And that's HUGE

Land title is Gravity

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Will Ontario House Prices Keep Going DOWN This Year? YES And What About Next Year? Likely YES

Lot's of good private technical analysis being done on this question lately that never gets to the public

I had a chance to review one report & its pretty damn alarming

2/ Worst case outcome was ANOTHER 2O% DROP from today's prices

Since average Ontario price is already down 25% from the March 2022 all time high the new number would be a wild 45% decline

This analysis used some fairly dark assumptions but none of the key inputs were outliers

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Mortgage Rates Headed Down: What's The Best Move?

Canada Bond Yields have dropped: 5 - Yr Yields more than 6% down in just a week: 3 - Yr Yields down over 8% on the month

And Mortgage Rates have come down: Scotia touched off a Rate War on 3 - yr Fixed 2 weeks ago

2/ With extremely aggressive 3 - Yr Pricing: 3.69% on CMHC Low Down Payment Purchases & 3.99% on every other kind of 3 - Yr Mortgage

Other banks quickly followed suit although a bit reluctantly, this time of year doesn't typically have the aggressive rate wars of Spring Markets

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Fixed Mortgage Rate Or Variable Mortgage Rate? The Debate Goes Red Hot Today

As Canada accepts the idea our economy really is tanking & the Bank of Canada must cut rates this year the eternal question of Fixed or Variable is front & centre

What's the answer?

2/ Some of it is situational

If people are positive they will sell there house in a finite time horizon like 12 - 18 months take Variable

Guaranteed to only be a 3 - Month Interest penalty & on a short term basis 100% sure the rate will go down at least 50 BPS

Easy call

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Canadian Jobs Report A Disaster: What does It Mean For Bank Of Canada's Rate Decision?

66K Jobs Lost in Canada, over 100K in the last 2 months

Horrible outcome for all those families

Windsor Ontario hit & Alberta feeling the pain as energy prices slide

A country in pain

2/ Bank of Canada Decision on September 17th

Odds of a cut jump to 70%

Canada Bond Yields fell immediately so Traders sure believe in a cut

Will it happen?

Whether it's the 17th or not isn't the key issue

The key is cuts are now locked in

Whether its September or October

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Prime Minister Carney Please STOP Build Canada Homes: Cancel It NOW

Because this program is going to be a colossal failure & light Billions of Taxpayer's dollars on fire

You need to cancel it for many reasons but perhaps the most important is: it's just about Rentals

2/ Let's break it down:

- The entire discussion about Build Canada Homes has been about Affordable Housing: these are code words for Rentals & Subsidized Housing.
- We do NOT need a whole new Bureaucracy built to encourage Rentals: CMHC's Rental Program has already worked

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Federal Housing Minister Robertson Discovers Toronto Condo Market In Free Fall: Only 2 Years Too Late

It's always wild when Government realizes something everybody else knew for years

When the Immigration Minister noticed 3 Million New Canadians showed up in 2.5 years

2/ Wow, that may be too many

Or after 6 years of the Carbon Tax as the most hated thing in Canada & creating it's own inflation: Mark Carney shows up one day & says: this Carbon Tax has to go

The most hellacious thing about modern government is mind bending incompetence

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What They Call Mortgage Fraud In The USA Is Just A Normal Transaction In Canada

It just got a Federal Reserve Governor fired yesterday

It's called a False Primary Residence Declaration & in the USA it's a crime that can come with jail time

In Canada it's accepted practice

2/ This is whether the house being mortgaged is a primary residence, a secondary residence or a rental

Owner Occupied: Best Mortgage Rate

Secondary Residence (Cottage): Not as good Mortgage Rate

Rental: Significantly higher Mortgage Rate

In the USA you MUST be truthful

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Canada To Become A Nation Of Renters? The Truth Behind CMHC Housing Start Numbers

CMHC announces an adjustment UP in New Housing Starts this year to 294K

Ontario continues to be a disaster, Starts are down 68% from previous years

Where are the Starts & what are they?

2/ Quebec, Alberta, Prairies & Atlantic are all up, Quebec & Saskatchewan in particular are busy. BC still slow

What's getting built?

RENTALS are getting built in massive numbers

Starts for Houses for people to BUY is in a disastrous state, one of the lowest numbers ever

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Housing Crisis? What Housing Crisis? CMHC Announces Rental GLUT: So Many Rentals By 2026 They Will Stay Empty

Peak Insanity

Let's break this down

Condo Crashes in Toronto & Vancouver means there are many thousands of Condos that can't be sold

And more are completing!

2/ In the next 18 months there will be at least 40K more completed (mostly Dog Crates) that are so small they are only suitable for Rental

Meantime for the last 7 years CMHC's very good plan to encourage Purpose Built Rentals becomes a massive success story

With an added twist

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Why Recent The First Nations Land Ownership Court Decision In BC Is Totally NUTS

After a 5 Year Trial (longest in Canadian history) 800 acres in the City Of Richmond Hill BC was awarded to the Cowichan Tribes ending 200 years of accepted property law in Canada

2/ At the stroke of a pen a fuckwit Judge negated one of the most important aspects of law in a free society: property rights

If a court can decide a First Nations claim supersedes existing muti decade property titles this country is in more trouble than I thought

3/

Lousy Jobs Report Could Signal Future Bank Of Canada Rate Cuts

The concept that the Bank of Canada was finished cutting rates took at hit today with the report of 41K job losses (51K Full Time Jobs) Canada wide

Don't expect a cut at the September 17th announcement

2/ But if there are 2 more lousy jobs reports the October or December BoC announcements will likely bring a cut

That's particularly true if Canadian GDP shrinks as well

What to think about the future of mortgage rates?

Right now is an incredibly hard time for predictions

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