As the only kid of Chinese heritage at his school, Marcus Wong, who grew up in the posh West Vancouver neighbourhood known as the British Properties, says he got some strange looks.
“People would look at me and remind me subtly, ‘This is why the British Properties are called the British Properties,’” said Wong, 39.
When Wong bought a house, he realized why he felt so unwelcome. There it was, in writing: a covenant on the land title barring people of African and Asian descent from living in this enclave.
“No person of the African or Asiatic race or African or Asiatic descent except servants of the occupier of the premises in residence shall reside or be allowed to remain on the premises,” it read.
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“The language is very striking and shocking,” said Wong.
Wong is now a councillor for the municipality and has introduced a motion to have this particular language redacted from land titles. Technically, the province of British Columbia declared these types of covenants null and void in 1978.
But this part of Canada isn’t the only neighbourhood that has had a history of real estate rules that promote racial segregation.
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Residents who lived in the Broadview Avenue and O’Connor Drive area of Toronto weren’t allowed to sell to “Jews or persons of objectionable nationality.” That was deemed illegal in 1945.
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And it wasn’t until 2019 that the same anti-Semitic sentiment was removed from the books in the city of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, a community near Montreal.
“It was like a contract. You couldn’t sell to a non-white, and if you did, they could take you to court,” said historian Henry Yu.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
