News & Resources

High Ratio Mortgage Insurance Requirement Reduced

May 4, 2007 — A federal law that lowers the level at which mortgage insurance is required came into effect last month and bankers say the change could save homebuyers $2,000 or more.

For the last 40 years, homebuyers have been required to buy mortgage insurance unless their down payment equaled at least 25 per cent of the purchase price.

Now, as a result of Bill C-37, the requirement for mortgage insurance has been reduced. Homebuyers who make a down payment of at least 20 per cent of the purchase price will not be required to buy mortgage insurance

It is estimated that based on a home price of $300,000, a buyer with a 20 per cent down payment can save about $2,500.

Renovate, Recycle, Save Money & Find Great Stuff

Save up to 80% using used building supplies from Recycling Stores. With all the environmental concerns we are hearing about today it only makes sense to lessen the load on the landfills. Plus you will find great buys and some pretty neat stuff.

A few years back I renovated an old back shed into a small studio and found all my windows at a recycling store for a fraction of the cost.

There are three around the Toronto area that carry large inventories of popular materials and they will also pick up if you have something to get rid of. They have dismantling services for larger items such as kitchen cabinets. No payment for donated items, but tax receipts and the knowledge that you have saved something of value rather than contributing to more junk in landfill.

Habitat for Humanity ReStores – located at 1120 Caledonia Rd. in Toronto phone (416)783-0686 here’s the link to find their ontario stores
clickhere

Home Again Recycling Dept is a for profit store however, some of the earnings go to the Cancer Society or the Bllorview MacMillan Children’s Centre. They also will remove items for you and issue a donation receipt.
Located at 89 Research Rd. in East York . Their phone # is (416) 467-4663 website
Home Again

Builder’s Bazaar no tax receipts, but ocasional store credits or some cash. Located at 180 Burnhamthorpe Rd. E. , near Oakville 905-257-9070

Learning Annex Real Estate Expose Rather Than Expo

This was the weekend of the Learning Annex Expo… Saturday and Sunday with a Free starter workshop on the Friday for those with VIP tickets.

With the exception of Tony Robbins & a few other smaller headline speakers the topic of all of the smaller breakout workshops was basically real estate.

The workshops each started the same way ( at least the ones I attended) with the speaker telling everyone about how he started out in almost poverty, just about living on the streets and gave his tale of how he attended multi-millionaire status through some aspect of real estate investment.

Then the speakers went on to deliver their real estate investment wisdom… This is where I have a problem. Their stories are boring, but some people need to hear them. It’s the content that’s the problem. They each gave tiny dribbles of information usually a definition that any good investment realtor or investor would be happy to divulge free of charge at any time. But that’s not the point… these little dribbles were intended to entice the prospect to buy the investor teachers big package.

Package prices seemed to start about $1000. up to $6000.. The Learning Annex staff were of course handling the sales. Typically in events like this the promoter gets 50% of the take and the speakers speak free because they are allowed to promote their packages.

This is all the breakout seminars were in my humble opinions big upsells. I would gladly diseminate most of this infortmation freely to anyone who would like to come to my investment workshop and learn how it works in Canada. Yes I do invest in real estate and I am Canadian understanding the Canadian way of doing things.

There didn’t appear to be a single Canadian there that I could figure.

Now Tony Robbins was fantastic as always and brought the house down. I’m a Richard Branson fan but couldn’t be bothered showing up Sunday morning for 8 A.M. so that’s my problem.

But I truly despise seeing people gouged for thousands of dollars for information that is readily available locally or available in books that you can buy at Amazon.com albeit the technics described will be American and work well in U.S. markets as were the speakers at this event..who came with their Canadian counterparts or managers.

There is valuable information to be had, but not at these prices. This was a thinly disguised big bucks money grab on the part of the Learning Annex. If they didn’t have Tony their it would have been positively a smokescreen.

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