“The weather outside is frightful, making houses and the current mortgage rates more delightful.”

Don’t worry I’m fully aware of my inability to sing or even play a musical instrument even though my mother spent thousands of dollars sending me to piano lessons throughout my childhood and teenage years. But what I do have at my fingertips is some very interesting information and statistics regarding employment, who’s buying what and for how much.

-Alberta’s unemployment rate is slowly moving in the right direction, according to Genworth’s Risk Manager for the Prairie Region but the Oil & Gas sectors aren’t hiring at the speed that would have been expected given the price of oil, they are simply making do with who they have. But this is a short term strategy as employees can still only do so much. At some point that bubble is going to burst and companies will have to start rehiring.

– Currently in a buyer’s market: which means that we have many listings and low sales, but creates a huge opportunity for buyers.

– 66% of buyers in the Red Deer market are under 25 years old, with 45% of them being first time buyers – Genworth.

– 44% of Red Deer applications have credit scores of 660 -735, while 28% are higher than 735 – Genworth.

– 98% of Red Deer applications have income above $44,000 a year – Genworth.

– CMP magazine states the national average home price reached a record $325,400 this year.

– 5.65 Million: number of Canadians with mortgages, that’s up 4.6% from last year.

– 60.1% of Canadian homeowners have a mortgage.

– 31% of homeowners with some form of mortgaging in the last 12 months, 20% took out a new mortgage while the rest refinanced or renewed.

-$1.01 trillion: amount of residential mortgage credit outstanding in Canada.

-$235 billion: estimated volume of mortgage approvals in Canada

-50% is the average Canadians home equity.

-66% of Canadians chose a fixed rate in the past 12 months.

-29% chose a variable or adjustable mortgage.

-4% chose a hybrid mortgage (combination of fixed and variable).

-40% of Canadians used a mortgage broker for their mortgage in the past year.

There’s a lot of information above and I hope that it provides you with a glimpse into the Canadian mortgage market along with a regional perspective that’ll help you make an educated decision on what to do if you are in the market to buy a home.

Even though I can’t sing or play a musical instrument, the above information is enough to make me do a little dance as the number of Canadians chose to use a mortgage broker increased, and is increasing every year. This tells me that our industry is doing something correctly and that people are investigating their options more so than ever before.

Jean-Guy Turcotte is an Accredited Mortgage Professional with his partners at Regional Mortgage and can be reached for appointments at 403-343-1125, texted to 403-391-2552 or emailed at jturcotte@regionalmortgage.ca