While removing equity from your home can be a good idea, you should do so with caution and fully understand the benefits and possible risks. The best thing you can do is to consult a licensed mortgage professional to discuss opportunities to make your home's equity work for you.
Mortgage Pre-approval
Before you start the house-hunting process, there’s an important step you can take to save you time and make the process smoother: getting pre-approved for a mortgage. A pre-approval allows you to budget for your home purchase and focuses your home search. With a pre-approval you’ll also be able to lock in a mortgage rate in case rates increase during your home search.
Interesting Real Estate Statistics: The latest numbers from the Canadian Real Estate Association put the average price of a house at a little less than $520,000, propped up by the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver. When those two markets are taken out of the calculation the average price falls by $150,000 to just below $370,000 – a drop of nearly 30%.
Residential Market Commentary - week of March 20, 2017
The average price of a house in Canada has now topped half-a-million dollars, an increase of 3.5% over February of last year. Of course, the usual suspects are getting the blame. At the same time the household debt to income ratio has also hit a new high. But housing prices are not entirely responsible
The Canadian housing market has shown considerable strength in the last few months, but also a lot of volatility. Some of the wild swings in the metrics, with new listings particularly changeable, was likely due to changing seasonal patterns. February was an abnormally warm month across the country, but with winter weather back this month, some of the recent trends may stabilize.
