Making sense of the markets this week: April 21, 2024 + MORE Apr 19th

It’s a cliché that a lot of journalistic articles start with a Merriam-Webster definition. For new real estate investors or curious home buyers, however, getting into the game in Canada might as well require a dictionary with all the terms and intricacies you are expected to know. Here are a few important but often misunderstood real estate terms, with commentary from industry experts, to get you started. 

What does benchmark home mean?

A “benchmark” is a metric that calculates a more representative price for homes in a particular area than a strict average, which can be skewed by a small number of very expensive properties. A benchmark home calculation looks at factors like a specific geographical area or a type of home. But just because the term gets used a lot doesn’t mean it’s particularly helpful, says Canadian investor Daniel Foch. He says that real estate investors need to focus on larger living spaces if they want to have a sustainable portfolio.

“I don’t think that single-family houses are investable anymore,” he says…

Kyle Prevost, creator of 4 Steps to a Worry-Free Retirement, Canada’s DIY retirement planning course, shares financial headlines and offers context for Canadian investors.

Canada’s unproductive budget

After talking a lot about how we really—finally—need to get serious about the decades-long issue of Canadian productivity decline, the federal government decided that perhaps it wasn’t such a big priority at all.

Tuesday’s federal budget had a lot of changes in it, and MoneySense’s columnist and Certified Financial Planner Jason Heath has an excellent breakdown of how the 2024 federal budget might affect you and your finances.

But for the purposes of commenting on Canada’s productivity, we’ll focus exclusively on the changes to the taxation of capital gains. Until Tuesday’s announcement (which takes effect in 10 weeks) only 50% of a capital gain was included as taxable income on your annual tax return. That inclusion rate will now be 66.67% for capital gains within corporations and trusts…