The 9 Most Googled Real Estate Questions of 2026

Welcome to the Canadian Real Estate Investor, where host Daniel Fosh and Nick Hill navigate the market and provide the tools and insights to build your real estate portfolio. Real estate searches in Canada hit me five year high this year, 2026, and inside that pile of queries and searches, two main themes dominated everything else. Global anxiety and investor curiosity. We pulled the CMHC Mortgage and Sumer Survey, Google Trends data, and what brokers and lawyers across the country were getting asked over and over. And today we're going to be answering the nine most Googled questions. No filler. I like doing these episodes. You know, it's fun to see what people are looking at out there. Okay, so we're going to do seven main questions, two bonus rapid fire questions at the end. Obviously, some of these are macro takes as we like to do on the show. Summary tactical as we also like to do. And some are kind of just stuff that you should know. And all of them are things that real people, maybe even you are typing into Google, maybe Claude, maybe Chad CBT, and trying to find the answers maybe at 11 o'clock at night when you should probably be going to sleep. That sounds like you're speaking from personal experience here. Well, Dan, it's currently 9.30 when recording a podcast. Sure. We haven't done this a long time. Maybe we should go to see the heatpaces. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get into it anyway. Start us off with number one, which I think I'm going to pull it up. I'm surprised that actually that's this was this one because it's the most. It's just a indiscriminate list of things. A bit of an indiscriminate list, but I would not be surprised if this was number one, especially, you know, this year with all the renewal cliff activity. So the first question fixed or variable in 2026 Dan, this is relevant because again, millions and millions of Canadians are and have been renewing their mortgages. Right. So the most Google question in Canada. So it is the most Google question every year, funnily enough, but especially this year, it's the state of the rate. Okay. So what is happening in the mortgage market as a right now? I thought it was date the rate. Well, that's a different concept. You know, right now the best five year variables run three and a half to four and a half percent the best five year fixes around three, seven to three, eight variables, kind of a little bit cheaper, but you know, variable changes. And a lot of people got caught in that. So that's why there are people are asking this. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, you go to that same HG chart that we mentioned, you know, you can see that period of time when people are piling into variables. And now variable is the most popular single mortgage product, although in 2021, it was like 56% of all mortgages. So it was like more than everything else combined, but now it's about 42%. But it tracks actually, if you go over to the Google search trends, you know, that fix versus variable, the only time that search trends have been higher than it currently is was right during the rate hiking cycle. Like when they fired the warning shot, it was like, you've learned like, what do I do? So anyway, that's just me. Yeah. Bank of Canada now, you know, pretty firmly parked. It feels like at 2.25. Yeah. I think they're expected to hold their thread the year. That seems to be most economist consensus, which would mean that variable rates probably won't move much in 2026. And I think they're at a bit of a discount, right? So people are just capturing the discount, maybe less than the downside or like trying, you know, trying to get future rate cuts priced into their mortgage rate, I think. Totally, totally. And look, I mean, this is the age old question, right? Fixed or variable comfort or risk, you know, and fixed right now is a bit of the wild car, right? The five year fixed, that's tied to the five year government of Canada bond yields. And most forecasters expect fixed to drift higher by the end of this year, possibly to, you know, the mid fours higher fours by the end of the year. Of course, this all depends on so many things, right? Day and we track bond yields all the time in the commercial space. And guess what? Bonds get dropped somewhere else in the world or US trade stuff. They don't seem like bonds. No, bond yields don't like bombs. And, you know, I feel like most people and things would rather, no, we don't go off separately no, apparently like that. I guess yeah, defense contractors and stuff, maybe, but yes, mortgage bonds which play a crucial and government mortgage bonds, you know, this is something that moves the market. And if you want to go back like, you know, I think it was like 80 years of data when the last time we brought this up or like 100 years of data, your variable rate actually beats your fixed rate about 80% of the time over the last those 30 years, I think is the cross section. So yeah, I think there was like one, there's like one or two mortgage terms where you wouldn't have one. So that's not nothing like 20% of the time they don't do it. The problem is when they don't do it, they don't do it catastrophically as we learned in 2022. Yeah. Is this like anchor man where like it works 20% of the time at the time? It pretty much. It's literally exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, so I guess kind of to speak for both of us, you didn't. Our take would be, look, if you're a stress tested investor or a buyer in this market with stable income and a bit of a tolerance for payment changes, you know, variable is the math winner right now. Unpricing mostly right? Like what are they like 60 beps below your fixed right now? Yeah. Depends on the lender and of course, depends on the borrow in the product. But yeah, you know, and you're already lower today and you know, if you're not expecting rates to rise, then you know, maybe risk it and get into the variable. Yeah. Yeah, I think the one thing I really like about the fixed as an investor is just that the predictability of pay principal pay down for sure. You know, it's easy to model when you're going to be able to do the next deal. Like you know exactly how much principal you'll have paid down by the time your mortgage is up. So maybe if you're tight on cash flow, obviously, maybe not for you and you know, pay the premium to have the certainty, I think the math being better doesn't matter if it's going to keep you up at night, which you know, there are, I think that the last five years have shown us that there are periods of time where that is very, very possible. And so I would encourage people to be exceptionally careful with those credit types. Yeah. Here's some math for you. If you're not getting, you know, seven, eight hours of sleep, you can minus a lot of good things from your life, you know. So get some sleep at night and if your mortgage is causing you nightmares, then you know, lock it in. And I think there's more. And I know that for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's a good excuse not to get, not to get sleep. You don't need your mortgage. It's still talking about math here. It still doesn't make me get more sleep. You know, so there's also a middle ground here, too, Dan, that kind of gets forgotten about a lot if you're not, you know, in our world, basically. And that's that's kind of the shorter fixed terms, right? The two or the three year split seconds a little bit to like your three year fixed is 32% of mortgages right now. The other thing you can do is you can put multiple credit facilities on one. Like you can have like half of your mortgage fixed and half variable. No. There's certain products that that offer more complicated stuff like that, like the average buyer, the average investor likely isn't isn't going to take advantage of that kind of stuff. I mean, right. And I would advise most people to not, I mean, again, like pick a lane. Yeah, just pick a lane, right? And you're either going to pick a lane with a little bit of risk and monitor the situation as as ones does these days, or you're going to lock in. And as you said, have that have that comfort of knowing exactly what comes out of your account every month, right? And I mean, this lock like that, the shorter fixed it that it locks you in the pricing because the yield curve is a bit flat. So it gives you the exit optionality before that next big rate hiking cycle or rate cutting cycle that hopefully you'll be a bit more in tune with. Oh, man. I'm not getting caught in the same economy that we are right now in three years, man. I would be in big trouble if we are. So the one, I think the one issue and I'd have to check the rates, but like the last time I was looking at rates on a, on a refi that I had coming up, like the three year was a little bit more expensive than the five. And so yeah. So like a big piece of the puzzle here is just going to be pricing. Like how is the variable so much better price that is worth taking the risk on rate volatility is the three years so much worse that you'd rather get the five. You know, like it's going to vary on a deal-bedio basis and like what happens when, you know, and a person by person basis too, right? Like this really is a very personal choice like when I'm advising clients and they're, I still do, you know, help res, res business and when I'm advising res clients on stuff, you know, what I like to do is I like to lay out all the options, explain everything and then let them make that decision because it really is a personal and very personal and very financial decision. So there you go. I mean question number one, you know, we're not providing an answer. We're providing information. You go and make you going to make your choice. Hit me with numeral duo right here. Yeah, this is a scary one. Question two, I can't afford my mortgage renewal. What do I do? This is the searches at historic highs question. over 1 million households renew. this year, we know this, right? The average payment shock is about 20% up from the pandemic era rate they locked in, which isn't as bad as it was originally expected to be, but still. Yeah. I mean, look, 20%, that's the average. You know, there's obviously a lot of people that are above that. A lot of people that are probably in and around and below that. But for anyone in that situation, you know, the first thing is don't put this off, right? I do not kick this can down the road. It will come back to buy you. You got to start months and months out. You know, ideally six months out. Don't wait for the renewal letter to come in the mail. The November 2024 rule change means that you can switch lenders at renewal without restress testing, but only as you keep the same balance and amortization. So, look, you can get out there and shop around a little bit, right? Talk to your lender, talk to other lenders, engage a mortgage broker, get ahead of this. If you are expecting trouble, you know, get behind the wheel and steer this ship into calmer waters. The very well, I think also push push your existing lender like the the A side is getting so competitive on renewals totally presumably because they're not doing much acquisition business. You know, like nobody's really buying stuff. We're at record low sales last two years. So not really like that that we saw when we were covering like the banking industry and their mortgage. It was like they're higher. They did a huge hiring campaign for internal underwriters dealing with renewals and weren't hiring any new kind of like mortgage BDM's or like mortgage, not brokers. It's not brokers in the broker channel. It within the banking system. But yeah, I mean, like look at the numbers, the numbers don't lie. Yeah. So the easiest way to do this would be like step one would be get a mortgage broker to shop your renewal to at least three lenders. And even if you're doing this just to get your you know, to keep your existing lender honest, that's a good way to do it is present them with real data points. Hey, I can go to, you know, I'm at this bank. I can go to the I'm at the the blue bank. I can go to the other blue bank and get, you know, whatever 50 basis points less. If you match it, I'll, you know, save me the headaches and I'll check the box. But you know, so go do you that. You know, if you don't want to it's maybe not an exceptional use of a broker's time. If they know that you're just doing it to, you know, to try and improve your your existing mortgage brokers or or a cringey listening to this. But it's that kind of market. So, you know, you got to work for it. Yeah. I mean, if they beat it, then you know, they should earn the business. But also, I mean, I think if you don't want to be disrespectful to mortgage brokers and ask them to do a bunch of work that you're just going to use to beat up your existing lender, maybe just go shop them yourself or just pull up like, you know, rate hub or wow, or whatever and be like, well, I can get these four more. It is, can you guys get me that rate? No. Okay. Well, I'm going to go and inquire about those then. Yeah. Look, another one that, you know, I don't love advising this kind of stuff, but these are, this is kind of desperate times. That's for measures type, type of actions right here. If you really can't afford your renewal, you know, if the math really still isn't working, talk to your lender about extending that amortization, right? Go from 20 to 25 years, you know, that can drop your monthly payment. I got to find the data point, but there is an insane amount of people who extend at AMS this year. Oh, for sure. I mean, look, it's an easy, it's an easy way to release some of the stress rate. Yeah. Like, look, you pay more interest over your life and your own. Unfortunately, it's like 30% more interest. A ton more. But look, it's kind of like, do I want to blow up now or can I, you know, bleed out a little bit more over the next couple of years and maybe when times change, you know, maybe you put a lump sum down or something like that, right? Like for some people, hopefully, this is a temporary fix, you know, but they said where we are in the cycle. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's really hard, man, because like, it just becomes a big cost benefit exercise. I think if you, like, I want to say to people, if you, if that's like a question you're asking yourself, maybe you should be considering just selling, but then selling comes with costs too, you know, like, okay, well, now I guess I know a lot of percent realtor loyal. And then I go rebuy and I'm getting land transfer taxes and I'm renting for a period of time. And so, you know, okay, well, adding all those opportunity costs and like, what's my actual like, you know, okay, like, now I'm thinking yeah, if I'm, if I'm going to lose that or pay that extra however much interest over the next, the extended amortization that I'm doing right now, maybe, you know, again, the cost benefit is is better for making that move rather than then selling and absorbing all those switching costs. So, I mean, the other challenge is that I think if you go to an extended amort, changing the mortgage product, so it's a refine out of renewal. Sometimes they will offer you though, like, they just on the renewal, the ability. Yeah. And this is where again, conversations with your lender and, and, you know, I urge those listening who are in this position, I urge you to go and have these conversations, you know, yes, engage in mortgage broker if you want to, but like, if there's ways around that without, you know, in a lot of cases, people really don't want to have to change the product because a refinance means you get restressed tested and incomes might not be what they used to be. So, you know, that can, it's kind of that can of worms, pandora's box, whatever, right? But this always, this goes back to the kind of the main theme here, which is, you know, if you still can't qualify, you got to talk to your existing lender because at the end of the day, the banks don't want your house, okay? They want payments. So, banks in a lot of cases will grant you temporary relief interest only periods or, you know, even in some cases like a, a skip, a payment option or, you know, they get creative and they have more ties as well. Yeah. Why do they do because they, it's responding to the market and they want to put a bunch of their stuff. Yeah. Well, they don't want to put a bunch of their borrowers into default, right? I mean, like, why would they? I mean, we've talked about power sale a whole bunch of times and this is a result of this kind of behavior. So, this is the bank stepping in and putting that stopgap up and saying, look, like, let's work together to figure out you stay in your house and you keep giving me money. Yeah. I think step four, if you've exhausted the options is what I was saying before is like, if you can't, if you can't lever your way out of this problem or, you know, dead ahead, one might say, you got to sell. And I think, you know, a lot of investors have a hard time coming to terms with this one, man. I do. I have, honestly, I've like, I, you know, it's, it's like you feel like you failed. You, you know, you didn't win like, there's something about it. It just feels wrong. Shame investor shame. Yeah. Like I was never selling. Now I sold, you know, I've, I feel like you know, I'm asking you to sell logging or whatever. I don't know. I'm trying to learn my language. So do you imagine selling logging while that's fantastic? Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know. That's the right use of logging, but I have no idea what I'm talking about, man. But I'll try. I'm going to learn. I'm going to look it up. I think that ego is very, very dangerous in investing and especially in the levered investing, which real estate is and pride can be one of the most expensive motions in real estate. So I would be like, really, you know, we're in a market where you really have to have our look at your, your, some of your assets and say, like, man, there's, there's like assets that like, Johnny and I own together and we're like, like, there's one, like, it's a big piece of land. And I'm always like, I just like, I just like this to this as a, you know, but it's like, it's not, I've been there. It's really not. I don't surround there with you boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you go to the back of the woods and there's a cab in there and crack some cold ones and whatever. And it's like, you know, it's like one of those properties or it's like heart. That's a hard one to part with. Yeah. And it's not even a pride thing, but it's just dumb. I'm just being dumb. You know? So it's like, well, listen, like, this is, this is emotions, right? And like you are an investor. You're a numbers guy, but still there's that like, ah, like I never, I think what it is, it's like, as investors, you have a plan whether you loan admitted or not, you've got a plan and a dream for every property. And when that dream or plan isn't realized and you're in a position where you're forced to sell before being able to, even if the non realistic dream, you know what I mean? Like it kind of hurts, right? It sucks. So look, I think the number one mistake here and again, to reiterate the question, if I can't afford my renewal, what do I do? The number one thing that you do is you get ahead of it. Okay. We just gave you a whole bunch of ways to deal with this, waiting until 30 or 60 or 90 days before the renewal to not think about it, to not have a plan, to not talk to your partners, your options get fewer and fewer. Deal with this upfront. Get ahead of it. You know, months ahead of it is the best advice. So anything else, Daniel, should we move on to question three? Yeah, hit me with question three, because I think this is, this is it could. Yes. This one, we're Googling this. I think you're a chat GBD version. Okay. Question three, will house prices go down in 2026? I mean, look, it's a question that nobody can really answer. Honestly, I'd be like, will they go down? Yeah, they have been going down with they go up, maybe in some markets, let's take all the, the BS out of it, Dan, and answer it as honestly as possible. Hit me with the national snapshot here. So the national snapshot is the average home pricing candidate is about 673,000 as a March. It's up 1.4% month over month. which doesn't matter much in the spring market, I would say, the prices usually rise on the average basis like from January till May or June. But, you know, year over year, functionally flat, coming down, I mean, we're down, I think 4% from, like, May over May. And we're down, I think, like, 20, what, 28% off peak. So, you know, you have this idea where people are like, is this the bottom? You know, like, has the correction, like, bottomed out, 'cause it's, you know, it's not going down steeply anymore, it's starting to flatten, starting to flatten. And I think people are really like, I'm, you know, trying to call the bottom, right? People are really trying to try, and they're asking Google, like, how do I turn the market perfectly? And, so, you know, it, but it's interesting to see that that's kind of the, the fact that people are asking, tells me that they're, they, they think that there's maybe a chance that they're not going to continue going down. - Yeah, I mean, you ask a realtor, the realtor gives you an answer, and you're like, "Ah, whatever, you don't know what you're talking about, I'm going to go check Google and clawed and chat GPT." And so, I mean, look, these questions so far, Dan, they are very telling of the market we're in and kind of where we are in the cycle. But of course, with Canada, you know, the national picture is much more of a regional split, right? Calgary, Abbotina, Atlanta, Canada, as we said in a prior episode, Dan, still appreciating, still going up in all these markets for, for the most part, right? - A lot of markets, of course. - And of course, all time highs, man. It's crazy. - All time highs, dude, yeah. But then of course, you know, the usual suspects, the Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, the, essentially, essentially GTA and lower mainland are flat or have declined a ton or still kind of on their way down. Then of course, you unpack the asset classes, right? Conno's specifically completely screwed, in all the cases, weakest they've been in a long time, if not ever. And then, you know, the subcategories of that, like the assignment market, you know, just walk away if someone tries to do that with you right now. - But I feel like, what we're seeing in prices. - Yeah. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are speculators, just like have a hard time admitting it and being like, having trading psychology and being willing to cut their losses and moving into a better investment. But I mean, like, let's just examine, you know, range of potential outcomes. If prices were to go up, it would be continued immigration, which we're not seeing right now. Housing supply, still being well below demand, which I don't really think we're seeing right now. Mortgage rates, not rising. I mean, maybe even falling would be kind of necessary if we're gonna try and put, like, you know, if I'm trying to say what could make prices come up. And, you know, the renewal cycle pain being done, like being behind us would sort of, you know, that's obviously been suppressing some demand and creating some supply. It just getting past that, help prices move up. And I think, you know, you can run through that list and I think I accidentally injected my opinion on a couple of them, but like, what's the likelihood of most of those things being the case? And then the question becomes, well, what are the factors that might push prices down, Nick? - Yeah, I mean, look, there's a whole bunch of them right now. It feels like just about everything it could affect prices negatively, right? Recession risk, which, you know, I haven't heard a lot about the recession that we're in right now, but we technically are, you know, again, trade, tear of pressure, businesses leaving Canada, all that stuff, you know, the condo issue in major cities is still impacting the overall market. Renewal payment shock, which we've just talked about, it's causing four sales, causing a lot of stress and uncertainty in the market, cooling immigration. I mean, take your pick, right? You want me to keep going here? There's so many. - Yeah, I think, you know, you mentioned the US tear of pressure and I think I'm in the Google search trends console right now to pull up charts for this thing. So I just searched Kuzma and Kuzma is at an all time high for Canadian searching it as well. So yeah, I mean, like, like all the things that you listed seem like more likely things to be happening than any of the things that I listed. I think most of the things that I listed probably won't happen. So my guess would be that prices, like, you know, maybe policymakers are obviously making meaningful effort to step in here. So if they can they make that happen, you know, broadly flat to, like, I think flat or like that continued grind down. And I think it's a difference between real and nominal prices as well. Like real house prices adjusted for inflation will likely be lower because inflation is still running hot and prices are not going to outgrow them. But I think there's, what the bigger theme is you'll see this like significant regional divergence where you're seeing some of these markets where people can afford to buy houses or they'll continue, they'll probably continue doing fine as long as nothing catastrophic happens to their individual economies and people can continue to afford to buy houses in those markets. The markets where, you know, unemployment's highest on Ontario and a lot of places are on Ontario. And prices are still like brutal. I like, I don't see how they don't continue moving down towards a place where it priced income is more appropriate and people can start stepping back into the market. Condos obviously, especially in Toronto and the GTA and Vancouver still under pressure, although it sounds like the government might be, you know, relieving some of that pressure perhaps to place that the most diplomatic way I can say that. Yeah, just a little back massage for, you know, the largest developers and banks in the country. That's okay. That's another episode. Look, the bigger point here, I think that need to just keep reiterating and we have been for years is stop trying to try and to time the market. Okay. I hate to say this again, but it's time in the market for a lot of people not timing the market. No one knows when the bottom is. No one knows when the peak is. If we did, there wouldn't be a bottom in a peak because we would all know. People who waited for the crash since 2014, they've missed generational appreciation within that last decade or more. People that bought the 2022 peak with cheap money that thought they were geniuses getting in are mostly fine because some cases are not selling or in some cases, they are totally screwed because they bought at the highest with the lowest rate and they were on a variable. There's ways to make mistakes in a good market. There's ways to make mistakes in a bad market and there's ways to get good deals done in both. But by when you have the financial position and are ready to do so, not when everyone else is doing it door when everyone else is selling or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah, and I think the, we just did an episode of First-End Home Buyers and what's happening there. And I think that our country and take on this whole thing would be that the next leg up would not be coming from end user demand. First-End Buyers are owning the market right now and the market's not going in a good direction. So we cannot rely on them to prop the market up. No, but I think that-- Damn 40-year-olds. Yeah, there's been houses down. I think when investors start moving back into the market and we see you, by the way, because our numbers are oddly doing well. And Nick, we didn't have any conversation with us earlier today. It's like, I've had some weird calls with smart people with a lot of money that are rotating out of stocks 'cause their stocks are just so scary. I'm hanging on to the side of the rocket ship and I'm loving it 'cause I'm going to space. But I'm also like, this is scary. It's like, could blow up at any time. And I think the smart money's making moves in real estate right now. Yeah, and so they're looking at the real estate. They're like, well, what asset class isn't? What asset class is the rocket ship that already blew up? And how can I go and salvage some of those pieces that are laying on the ground? And that's where they kind of turn to that. And so I think the asset class is getting some interest again from the capital side, which is fascinating to me 'cause I didn't think it would happen this early. And then I would say when I say interest, like early interest, the sales cycle for this is long. Yeah, don't get too excited, whatever. This is not damn safe. I'm not calling you with a lot of money. We're on the way all, but I gotta be careful when I say I'm in everybody's arms. And here we go. And then I start to get a message next week. And he's like, yeah, I just levered up and bought like, 'cause of what you said, it's like, no, guys, that's not what I'm saying. Not financial advice, everybody, please. Question four, Dan, then this one kind of bleeds right into what we're talking about here, right? Like the math, finally, working, talk to me about what Canadian city has the best cash flow right now. Man, if only there was a website that had all of the assets on the market sorted by yields and cash flow. But yeah, we get this question all the time, right? Like, everybody wants to sell some of the headaches. Yeah, we built that to, we're gonna do a whole episode on realists by the way, like our vision for it and like what we want it to accomplish. 'Cause I, like I realize we've been talking about it in kind of like a, like teased, teased, but like, yeah, cryptic, but like, I really wanna like build the best. And like, it's possible now with AI and vibe coding, especially Fable and whatever, but we wanna build the best investor platform for realtors, or for investors in Canada. And I think we, because we have the audience, it's like, makes it easy to get traffic there so that we can get people using it and collecting those data points and also telling us how we can refine it. So we'll do a whole episode talking about realists over the summer when the, you know, like the, only the most faithful of listeners are still around. But I think that that, we get this, we get this question all the time. And our goal with the site is part of it. bit is trying to answer this question. A lot of people want to skip the process of having to shop around and find what markets seem to be performing the best so that they can then go and only look at finding the assets within that market. It really just, I hate to give like a half-ass answer, but it does depend on what you mean by, you know, when people throw around so many metrics and half the time they don't even really know what they're talking about. But so like, are we talking cash flow? Are we talking like cash on cash return? Are we talking like, you know, like so there's so many, you know, and I think there's, you know, a lot of regulatory things happening now like Alberta, Calgary as an example, like why do we do our multiplex event in Edmonton? Well, Calgary wiped out 80% of their multiplex up zoning, you know? So there's a lot of, you know, Airbnb investors learned how quickly the stroke of a pen can blow up an investment. Student rental investors just learn the same thing. So I think there's a lot of regulatory risk that, you know, yeah, like we can, I think focusing on cash flow is important, but it's not, maybe not the only thing. Well, I also think that it can mean so many different things to different people. And you know, for instance, like if you just mean pure positive monthly cash flow from, from day one on a turnkey property, well, you're likely paying a lot more for that than you would something that you're going to have to go in and fix and, and, you know, buy a whole thing. And then you get some, yeah, then you get some forced appreciation and get a return on that. That's not really nice. So I counted in cash flow. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. But like, turnkey properties in Edmonton, Winnipeg, yeah, like parts of Saskatchewan, Subbury, Thunder Bay, like kind of those like in second, yeah, Monkin Shuttle, Monkin, like all those markets I just mentioned, right? I'll do that again. Monkton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, some parts of Saskatchewan, Subbury, Thunder Bay, those are your lower entry price points, decent rents. And the math in a lot of cases, again, I know people are going to be well, I invest in there and I'm getting screwed. Okay. Well, not every deal. Okay. But I'm saying you can find good deals there. And the math in a lot of cases kind of works way to the gate. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think if you go over to total return, like cash flow, plus appreciation, potential, plus development or like up zoning or multiplex potential opportunity, Alberta in its entirety would be hard to beat if you buy the right assets. Like, it's the only population growth province right now. You know, there's no provincial sales tax. You're getting up zoning in a lot of places, you know, price to incomes are reasonable. So you still have like your marginal buyer demand that's keeping the market moving. So I would say like, I like Alberta in that regard. I think it's tough to beat like just from market fundamentals actually still existing. There are other markets I like for more personally for different reasons. But if we're just talking about those like, you know, actual variables, that one stands out. Yeah. No, for sure. And like, if you're talking about again, kind of that emerging market plus the upside to the kind of some of the place I was mentioning, but going back to, you know, I'm putting money into this, putting sweat equity, you know, your Halifax is your munked in Charlotte, Atlanta, Canada's popping off, double digit appreciation last year. Rents are still climbing vacancy is below 3% across that entire region of the country. So, you know, I would be looking there. I mean, we're literally giving everyone right now great markets to look at. I'm not going to tell you the best market because there's no such thing as the best market depends on who you are, your asset class, how much money you have, what kind of property, what kind of work you're looking at. But these are all great places to look at. Yeah. And then I think if you are thinking cash flow specifically from, you know, adding a new unit or ADU or going to multiplex, you go to like Ontario, we got built 23 BC, built, built 44. You get zoning that makes it easy for you to do this. So if you have the cash to spend on construction or if you, you know, cash flow, like we're just like in cash flow again, you know, profit on top of your mortgage payment. Like, well, you can make that way better by just going on a 50 year M on CMHC MLI select, right? So it's one of those like very subjective. Like the question is there's too much range for how you manipulate cash flow. So yeah, that's my, so let's jump over to five maybe should. Yeah. Should I be incorporating this is one of my favorite because of the whole co-mess that I think we, you know, we've talked a lot about on the show, but I think it's like everybody always, oh, I'm gonna pay less tax or whatever. That's actually technically not true, by the way. Yeah. Okay. And again, not financial advice question five of the most Googled questions of 2026 so far. Should I incorporate my rental? One of the top investor questions, Dan, we've gotten it so many times we've done episodes short answer. Probably not, but at least until you cross a clear threshold in your investing journey. You know, it's usually your accountant would decide this for you and you're the threshold that most accountants that we talk to on the show or that like our clients or listeners that we speak with use seems to be that three to five rental property area when I tell you that's like the base, the base, right? Yeah, there's probably minimum three at least. Yeah. Below that, like the cost of incorporating and the cost of filing, incorporating, come taxes and all these other things typically eat the benefits, I would say. Yeah, I mean, look, you got legal costs, annual maintenance, this is gonna cost you a couple of grains, separate corporate tax returns. Dan, we've got a couple of corpse together, right? You're doing more taxes for more different stuff. You have banks are tighter on those kind of mortgages. I usually have a bit of a higher rate, a couple more hoops to jump through and you have to personally guarantee it anyway. If you're if you're born, if you're buying in a corporation, right? You have to personally guarantee. So you're not even fully isolating your liability in some cases, but there is definitely a part, a place where most investors get where it definitely makes sense, especially if you have a bunch of partners in your buying larger buildings, but in most cases for a lot of you starting out there that own one or two or maybe three properties, I'd say it's even like, after four, you can get away pretty easily with three. In my unprofessional opinion over your doctor, you're accounted. Yeah, and I think in many cases, most people are approaching their accounts, assuming they're gonna get a tax benefit from corporate, but passive income inside of corporations taxed at the passive income rate, which is high. And in Ontario, rental income are in passively inside a whole go gets taxed at 50.2%. So, you know, if your personal marginal rate for a lot of people, I'd say for most investors is lower. And you know, in a lot of cases, like your most people will leverage up to the to the point where they're comfortable with the leverage point and cash flow scenario. And you're paying so much interest usually at that point that plus the depreciation on the asset that you're not claiming a ton of income net on your on your rentals, that this like that income tax component matters a ton. So that it's like, well, capital gains, well, the capital, I think the capital gains rate is the same too, right? So yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, I think basically comes into once the liability exposure justifies the structural protection, the work, and the money, then it's time to do that. So again, tough question to answer. These are all such tough questions to put like a big blanket statement on. Like they're trying to do research because they are very like open ended and like difficult questions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this next one's not any simpler. I can I still air B and B my secondary property. Dan, this is a complicated one and hit me with the first piece here. Yeah. I mean, I think you had that period, that COVID period, like kind of COVID when everybody just became Airbnb investors because like everyone was like staycationing in, you know, like college country or whatever and moving there and, you know, so that I think that wave of like all those Airbnb bands, which are many of which are being walked back now, by the way, because that one, they didn't accomplish anything in two, we like don't have a problem with Airbnb. Well, I think it revealed that Airbnb wasn't actually the problem. Maybe, you know, bringing in 1.4 million people without building 1.4 million homes was the problem. But let's like go province by province and kind of quickly fire off whether or not, you know, you can you can do this. Yeah. Look, I mean, in BC, short answer is mostly know the short term rental accommodations act came in in May of 2024. As a year later, May 2025, every host must register provincially, you can only have your short term rent your, so you can only rent your short term principal residence plus a secondary suite on ADU and the same property, your condo, your college, your investment property. In most cases, I know there's some exemptions in smaller areas of the province, but can't legally rent it short term and the fines are pretty big. So be careful out there. Dan, hit me with Ontario. So in Ontario, it's not like BC where they have a provincial wide province wide regulation. Ontario, they've left it up to municipality. So it varies city by city. Toronto requires registration. In most cases, principal residence only, you know, there's 180 nights per year cap. Fines are big. Miscoka has license caps. A lot of those like kind of college country markets where you were getting what they call them party palaces or something like that. There's much articles about them like Nimbis just yeah. But you know, Ottawa Hamilton, Niagara, each of these like major markets has their own framework. And it came back. Provincial registration is required. Plus, there's going to be municipal layers. Montreal does restrict to principal residents in most of the boroughs there, but there again, seems to be some exceptions. Montreal Blah, pretty tight zoning, smaller eastern township municipalities. It's kind of still the Wild West, but a lot of them seem to be clamping down as well. Yeah, you jump over to Alberta. I mean, like most things in Alberta, it'd be the most permissive of provinces, the Wild West, no provincial registry. I think the major cities, Calgary and Edmonton do have some municipal rules with their very light. So if your thesis depends on Alberta, that's probably your safest bet on regulatory exposure. Yeah. And then let's jump over to the East Coast, Atlantic Canada. It's one's tough because it varies widely over there, right? Halifax, very little rules. Some rural new Brunswick is still wide open. PEI, it really caught a friendly framework in that existing. There's the only Canadian region where STRs are still being actively purchased by investors. So look, the universal rule talked to a lawyer, talked to your accountant, figure out what you are allowed to do because there are some pretty hefty fines. Dan, let's get to our final big question here in the world, really rip through the two rapid fire ones. How do I maximize the principal residence exemption? This is one of the top tax questions every year. Again, we are not accountants. Go and speak to your accountant. Just two guys talking about this, all right? So the rule is that every Canadian family unit can have one designated property per year as principal residence. That property's capital gain is fully exempt from tax when sold. So the property has to be actually lived in by, I think the technical languages ordinarily inhabited in that year, even a seasonal use, like a cottage or whatever would count as long as it's a regular thing. If you own a cottage, I don't think they really care because you can only apply it to one of those two assets anyway, right? Yeah, I mean, most people default to their primary home every year for ownership. What's wrong if you own a secondary property, you know, cottage or investment property that you lived in for a while kind of a, you know, the appreciation can be faster on a year of a year basis. So again, this is stuff that you got to talk to someone on your power team about. Yeah, and when you sell, you know, you would compare the per year capital gain on each property and then you get to do a designation, right? And that's what, which one would have it is what you would, you know, this, like the per day would let you like move it around to my understanding to minimize total tax. And so again, these are like informational purposes only ask your accountant, but like and they don't have questions. Probably people. Yeah. You know, like, I mean, you don't be a my, I'm like, you're a content. Yeah, you might get a decent, yeah, you might get like a decent chat GPT, like answer from this, but I feel like probably best safely answered by your, your accountant on that one, because I think the downside risk of messing up a huge capital gain with the CRA could be a pretty, pretty hefty penalty. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's leave that one at that. A couple bonus rapid fires before we get out of here, Dan. So all right. We, I'll just ask you in a new answer and then I'll try to answer. So is it cheaper to buy a rent right now? Depends on where and who you are. I mean, break even on buy versus renting. That's where home ownership starts beating renting in the lifetime total cost, right? Three to five years of owning and holding versus what you're renting for transaction costs, land transfer tax, lawyer, commissions for for the people involved, the eventual sale. You know, it's such a tough question to answer because. Well, it's a time in the market thing because it's exactly where are you? Where are you? Where are you in your journey? How much money are you making? Where are you living? Where are you planning on buying? How much is your rent right now? How much more could you afford or the bank? I'm in debt involved. I mean, I can answer your question with six more questions because that's what it takes in order to really provide a real answer in high level. Look, sure, for some people and and hell know for others. So I will take a different approach and say objectively, if you're good at saving money and you're good at investing, renting beats home ownership on the short term and the long term all day long, the problem is that most people are not good at saving money and most people are not invested, not good at investing. Data would prove this in Canada and in the US. And so this is why people like using their primary residence as a wealth building tool. Because it's forced savings and it forces you to put those savings into a hard asset that does okay. It is an excellent asset class. I love real estate. Obviously, we have this show. But the actual math would tell you that if you rent and save the difference and invest in just the S&P 500 index or BimoE ETF version of the S&P 500 index, you'll typically beat home ownership. But most people won't do those things. They won't save them on you. They won't invest in that. That's the problem. That's the problem. So, hit me with bonus number two here. What's the deal? And again, these are the most Googled questions of the final one of the night. What is the deal with the new 30 year amortization for first time home buyers? So basically, first time buyers can get 30 year amps on insured mortgages, so anything under 20% down. It applies to anybody buying a new, brand new home regardless of if they're first time buyer. So that was one of the first layers of like, stimulus that we would see on the government trying to pull some capital towards that new build market to keep the construction machine moving. And that was the same period of time. The same policy rollout. We did a bunch of episodes on it. But when you saw the CMHC cap move from 1 million to 1.5. Yeah. I mean, short piece here, you pay more in interest that there's a trade off. 30 year am helps you get more house today, but it's going to cost you more over the lifetime of that loan. So again, know that and understand that and instead of googling this stuff, write Dan and I and we will research it for you and talk to industry professionals and write great podcasts, opposed for you to listen. You don't have to go to Google and clawed in chat GPT. On that note, thank you so much for listening. Check out realist.ca if you're looking for deals. Honestly, Dan probably most of those questions could have been answered if they just went and listened to our podcast and looked on realist.ca. So yeah, the check goes out. Yeah, most episodes now have a companion report on realist.ca where you can click around in all of the charts and whatever. I just did one for all the Google charts so you can actually see all the Google search trends. I just like, and it sounds like I'm doing a bunch of work, but I literally just asked like, you know, vibe code to do it and it fires up a sick report. So go enjoy that stuff and you can see all the data that we're talking about on the show. And yeah, we'll do what we're going to do a whole episode on realist when we over the next little bit because we really want to get the audience involved and engaged in this as people seem to be interested in real estate investing again. Anyway, talk to you soon. The content of this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as financial legal or investment advice, always consult a qualified professional for advice tailored to your unique circumstances. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of affiliated organizations. Daniel Foch is a real estate broker license with Valerie real estate. Inc website is Valerie dot C a V A L E R Y dot C A and a member of the Canadian Real Estate Association, the Ontario Real Estate Association and the Toronto Real Estate Board. Nick Hill is a mortgage agent and partner at Owl Mortgage license number 10317 agent license M 2 1004037.