Triple Crown

The rental vacancy rate in B.C. has hovered at an average of 1.3 per cent over the past three years, according to stats from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. In Victoria, the rate sat at only 0.5 per cent at the end of 2016. In the Lower Mainland, the City of Vancouver’s rate is 0.8 per cent, while Surrey sits at 0.4 per cent. The rate is 0.5 in Abbotsford and Mission, and White Rock has the fewest available rentals in the region, at 0.1 per cent. Kelowna is sitting at 0.6 per cent. If you have kids going to Royal Roads, consider helping them buy a Triple Crown condo instead of living in barely suitable accommodations in the rental market. A condo is a valuable family asset that will appreciate, and a good way to set your kids on a path towards building their own financial future rather than a landlord's.

In recent years, home equity lines of credit — or HELOCs — have become popular for homeowners that want to turn their huge house price gains into cash. In a HELOC, a lender allows a borrower to withdraw a certain amount of money against the equity in their home. The interest rates tend to vary between 0.5 and two points above prime, so they're a little more expensive than mortgages. And they are extremely convenient. While people will do anything to make their monthly house payment and avoid default, HELOCs allow borrowers to simply make payments against the interest with no obligation to pay down the principal each month. Most people had no real intention to pay them off, and most felt safe about taking a loan in the face of rising home values. Almost 40 per cent of people who have them did not make regular payments against the principal. They owe the same amount on the principal as they did four or five years ago. A generation ago, the common wisdom was to pay ...