

A Buyer's Market With No Buyers: What May's TRREB Numbers Really Tell Us
The Bank of Canada met again this week and did exactly what they've done for the past 19 months. Nothing. The overnight rate is holding at 2.25%, your variable rate mortgage looks the same as it did yesterday, and the most interesting thing about the announcement might be a comment one of our YouTube viewers left under a recent video: "I've never seen a buyer's market with no buyers." That one sentence sums up the Toronto market better than any headline I've read this year. M
Gary McGowan
1 day ago5 min read


Canada Is Officially in a Recession. Here's What It Actually Means for the Housing Market
Canada just slipped into a technical recession. If you have been anywhere near the news this week, you have seen the headlines. They are loud. The actual numbers are a lot quieter. I sat down with my favourite mortgage broker, Dion Beg of Kanga Mortgage, to cut through the noise on this week's episode. Here is the breakdown for buyers, sellers, and investors trying to figure out what this all means. A "technical" recession is doing a lot of heavy lifting Every headline uses t
Gary McGowan
Jun 35 min read


Your Appraisal Came in Short. Now What?
If you've bought a new build in the last couple of years, there's a scenario keeping buyers up at night: you signed at one price, the market shifted, and now the appraisal is coming in lower than what you agreed to pay. Suddenly the bank will only lend on the lower number, and you're staring at a gap you have to cover in cash. This week on Realty Chatter, mortgage broker Dion Beg walked me through a real client situation where that exact gap got closed without the buyer scram
Gary McGowan
May 294 min read


Consumer Insolvencies Just Hit a 2009 High. Here's What It Actually Means.
Consumer insolvencies in Canada just hit their highest level since 2009. Power of sale listings across Southern Ontario are up 360% since 2024. And the worst April for home sales since 2003 somehow still showed up as "sales are up year over year" in the headlines. If you only read the headlines, you would be confused. That is exactly why Dion Beg and I sit down every week to pull apart Ben Rabidoux's Edge Realty report and put it in plain English. Here is what stood out this
Gary McGowan
May 205 min read


Why Smart Money is Quietly Buying 1,000 Toronto Condos
A Montreal-based investment firm just made a move that should have every buyer, seller, and investor in the GTA paying attention. Jesta Group is acquiring more than 1,000 Toronto condo units. Total deal size: $500 million. The plan is to convert them into rentals. I sat down with my favourite mortgage broker, Dion Beg from Kanga Mortgage, to unpack what this actually means, because the headline only tells you about 10% of the story. The math no one is running Let's start with
Gary McGowan
May 144 min read


Toronto Townhouses Down 8% In April. Detached Held. Here's What's Actually Happening.
The TRREB April 2026 Market Watch is out, and the numbers tell a different story than most people are expecting. Sales are up 7% year over year. Just under 5,900 homes sold across the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. New listings are down. Average sale price sits at roughly $1,051,000, down about 5% from a year ago. So far, nothing too dramatic. But dig one layer deeper and the surprise shows up. Townhouses Took The Hit, Not Detached Most people assume detached homes get h
Gary McGowan
May 73 min read
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