February 2020 – Mike Shannon

Changes to the mortgage stress test

Ottawa, ON, February 18, 2020 – Earlier today, Minister of Finance Bill Morneau announced changes to the mortgage stress test. The new benchmark rate used to determine the minimum qualifying rate for insured mortgages, coming into effect on April 6, 2020, will be the weekly median 5-year fixed insured mortgage rate from mortgage insurance applications, plus 2 per cent. Recently, the gap between the Bank of Canada’s five-year benchmark rate and borrowers’ actual contract rates has been widening, suggesting the […]

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Canadian home sales down in January

Ottawa, ON, February 14, 2020 – Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show national home sales declined between December 2019 and January 2020. Highlights: National home sales fell by 2.9% on a month-over-month (m-o-m) basis in January. Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was up 11.5% year-over-year (y-o-y). The number of newly listed properties was little changed (+0.2%) m-o-m. The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) advanced by 0.8% m-o-m and 4.7% y-o-y. The actual (not seasonally adjusted) […]

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CREA’s Chief Economist, Gregory Klump, retires after 28 years

Ottawa, ON, February 11, 2020 – Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist, has retired from The Canadian Real Estate Association after 28 years. Klump joined CREA in 1992, serving as staff economist for the Association. Promoted to Chief Economist in 2005, he grew CREA’s economic and data team into an authoritative source of Canadian real estate data and market analysis. Klump was instrumental in the development of the MLS® Home Price Index (MLS HPI®). He was a member of CMHC’s National Housing […]

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