Read this before applying for the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive + MORE Dec 17th

In a red-hot real estate market, a little help with the down payment on a home can go a long way—especially when you’re a first-time buyer without the advantage of equity in an existing property. So when the Canadian federal government decided, in 2019, to begin offering first-time home buyers down payment assistance under the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive (FTHBI), it seemed eligible buyers were in for a bargain.

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Before you begin a Whatsapp chat with your real estate agent and start browsing available listings, there are a few things you should know about the FTHBI. First, not everyone qualifies, since the program is limited to a specific subset of first-time homebuyers. Second, the incentive is not free money, but a form of loan from the Government of Canada which will eventually need to be paid back, possibly at a large premium…

“Most of what has sold in the area for $1.2 million and below are semi-detached and townhomes,” said real estate agent Othneil Litchmore. “In the grand scheme of things, this is a deal for a detached house in Streetsville.”

Each week, Cut the Crap Investing founder Dale Roberts shares financial headlines and offers context for Canadian investors. 

Jerome Powell, the stage is yours

This week, all eyes and ears were on the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell. The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, conducted a two-day meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday, it was announced the pace of the tapering of bond buying will double and that rate hikes are likely to begin in 2022. Power suggested we could see three rate hikes in 2022, with more to follow in 2023. 

The Fed was forced to respond to ongoing and troubling inflation in the U.S. On Monday, inflation readings showed a 6.8% increase for November, year over year. That was the greatest rate of increase in more than 40 years. It was time for Powell to get to work. One of the main tools a central bank has is to raise rates—to ultimately increase borrowing costs, and in turn cool the economy. 

The most notable line from the Powell press conference: 

“This is not the inflation we wanted…

Should you invest in stablecoins? Unlike the more dominant cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, stablecoins are digital assets whose value is tethered to another asset, such as a fiat currency, a commodity or other cryptocurrencies.

Since these coins are tied to an asset, usually a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar, they’re believed to be more “stable” than their substantially more volatile crypto peers. It’s this perceived sense of stability that makes stablecoins an attractive option for many investors looking to play the virtual coin market without the ups and downs.

Stablecoins have been around since 2014, but their popularity has soared over the past year, pushing their combined market cap past the US$100 billion mark in 2021. This rapid increase boosted the visibility of one of the leading constituents of the stablecoin market: USD coin (ticker symbol USDC), the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap—currently sitting north of US$41 billion, as of Dec…