Canadian Business: Five Things To Watch For This Week + MORE Aug 24th

Driving along the Gardiner Expressway through the heart of downtown Toronto, it seems like there are nearly as many cranes as high rises dotting the skyline. With tens of thousands of new condo units coming onto the market each year, and reported concerns of oversaturation, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that developers are offering incentives to lure buyers in. Here’s a few of the goodies on hand for prospective buyers.
Own-to-Rent
In July, The Minto Group announced that it would guarantee two years’ worth of rental income for units in its Westside development at Front and Bathurst streets in downtown Toronto.
As a way to entice investment buyers, the deal provides up to 6 per cent of the purchase price of a unit for the first 24 months of ownership. So on a $400,000 unit, buyers are guaranteed at least $2,000 a month in income, even if they can’t find tenants.
Also read: How an Income Suite Can Help You Qualify for a Mortgage>
Less Than the Price of a Cup of Coffee
Earlier this year, the WestStone Group offered buyers for its Evolve development in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey and enticing incentive: mortgage rates starting at $1 per day…

The average Canadian worker can expect a 2.5% raise next year, predicts HR company Morneau Shepell. That’s not far off the long-run annual average, unless you happen to be a mortgage broker in a major city. While the typical Canadian may have seen their pay increase somewhere around 13% over the past five years, many brokers in major metro areas have enjoyed almost double that growth, or more. That’s largely because home prices keep escalating. In Greater Vancouver, CREA’s benchmark home price is up 22.77% in the last five years. In greater Toronto, prices are up 40.57%. Even Calgary is still 19.35% higher. READ MORE

TORONTO — Five things to watch in Canadian business this week:
Stock Market: Traders will be keeping an even closer eye than usual on economic events at home and abroad after major indexes in Canada and the U.S. officially moved into correction territory last week, largely on fears of a greater than expected slowdown in China.
Housing: The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation releases its 2015 second quarter financial report on Monday. In its recent Q2 house price analysis, the federal agency warned that Toronto, Regina and Winnipeg are at “high risk” of a housing correction.
Banks: Canada’s big banks report their third-quarter earnings throughout the week, starting with the Bank of Montreal on Tuesday and ending with Scotiabank on Friday. The ongoing oil price plummet and a spate of bleak economic indicators in the first half of the year have sparked renewed concerns about the health of the banks.
Housing: Bank of Canada deputy governor Lawrence Schembri is in Kingston, Ont., on Tuesday to give a speech about the international perspective on the long-term evolution of house prices…

Q: Could you please explain to me what is the term in a mortgage?
Dear Getting a Mortgage: When you get a mortgage you will have both an amortization and a term. The amortization is the length of time it will take you to pay back the loan. In Canada, the most common amortization period is 25 years. You can amortize your loan for fewer years, which increases your monthly payments but reduces the overall interest you pay. If you have more than 20% equity in the property you may also choose a longer amortization period. This decreases your monthly payments but increases the interest you’ll pay on the loan. The key to remember is that the longer the amortized period the more insurance you will pay.
Ask Home Owner columnist Romana King your real estate question »
The term is the period of time you are entering into an agreement with a lender to pay back that amortized loan. The term, then, is a portion of that loan amortization period—consider it the length of time in which you are committing to do business with the lender…