Mortgage 101 Live – Financial Fitness for First-Time Homebuyers

Dan Ahlstrand and Clinton Wilkins discussed the need for Canadians to understand income, assets, and credit, especially amidst economic challenges like recession and high inflation.

Dan Ahlstrand
Welcome to this very special edition of the Todd Veinotte Show. Today, we will celebrate financial literacy month with a special live edition of Mortgage 101. And we can’t do that show without our first guest, who will be joining me for the first hour here. That, of course, is our good friend, mortgage guru and all-around nice guy. I’m not sure about the third part, but that’s Clinton Wilkins.

Clinton Wilkins
Of course, the third part might be a bit of a lie; we’re not sure, but that’s okay. And what? We’ve had such a magical year. Dan, really, a really great season, and there’s no better way to wrap up Mortgage 101 for 2025 than with financial literacy. This month, we had our show that was on the first weekend of the month, kind of kicking it off. And we’ve been talking about income, assets and credit all month long. And it’s really great to have a live show and be back during the week, because I’m sure some listeners don’t hear us on the weekend. So it’s great to be on here with you on a Thursday morning.

Dan Ahlstrand
Now, before we start, a couple of housekeeping items, Clinton. One, we mentioned, this is a very special edition of the program, and that’s because you’re here and we’re doing it live, but my studio is full of cameras today. We are very, very alive. Yeah, we are very, very alive. We’re streaming. We’re doing a live stream, which I don’t think, well, I know I’ve not done before. So you can catch that on Clinton’s Facebook page, if you want to follow along with us and see what we really look like.

Clinton Wilkins
Yeah, it’s on Clinton Wilkins’ mortgage team. It’s on our business Facebook. You can watch us live. You can see the full hour, and we have an hour full of guests, and it’s going to be really, really great. We’re going to talk about home ownership. We’re going to talk about mortgage lending and real estate, and what’s going on here.

Dan Ahlstrand
So, Clinton, this is Financial Literacy Month, and we have celebrated this in the past. And I know you find that this, this is an important month to to not only get out there and tell people about the real estate market and and why they should be in it and and the way to get into it, but also to give them a little bit education of of how they can get themselves in into better financial shape as we head into 2026.

<strong>Importance of Financial Literacy and Economic Challenges</strong>

Clinton Wilkins
Well, it’s the 15th anniversary of Financial Literacy Month, and it’s put on by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, overall financial literacy of Canadians, Dan, it’s the education level is very, very low. And that’s why I think our show that we do Mortgage 101, is so important. I think we’re breaking down some of the barriers. We’ve talked about that, we’ve encouraged people to have conversations about their income, their assets and their credit at the dinner table. And I hope that happens again tonight. November is a month where we’re really leading up to the holidays, and the holidays can be a very daunting time for folks, especially financially. There are a lot of strains, and there are a lot of strains right now. When we’re looking at what’s going on in the economy, really, truly, I think we’re in a recession, and inflation is still high. We’re still battling that. And, the amount of cost of consumer goods has increased faster than people’s income. So I think people are definitely squeezed this year. How can they put themselves in the best possible financial position between now and the end of the year? And how can they start the year right in 2026?

Dan Ahlstrand
Education is an important component, right? Because when you’re sitting around and you’re having those difficult conversations around the supper table and you’re coming together with where you are and are in a financial state, there’s a significant portion of the population out there, I think that really don’t even know where to start to look at what and how healthy they are or unhealthy they are financially.

Clinton Wilkins
It can be so daunting, really. And we break it down in very small, little, bite-sized pieces, I think, Dan, when we’re talking about credit, let’s do a deep dive about credit, we talk about Equifax, we talk about TransUnion, we talk about how people can improve their credit, and how they can maintain their credit? And that’s just one small piece. Sometimes people think that’s the only thing. Well, there’s a lot of other things that are involved in financial literacy, income and assets, and it can be daunting when you’re looking at that kind of that big picture, but I think you need to break it down in little bite sized pieces and,, look and research and learn and improve,, small, small steps at a time.

Dan Ahlstrand
When we did our show earlier this month, Clinton, we shared a lot of really valuable information. And if you haven’t heard that one, you can go back onto our side, to your side, and you can, you can pick that off, and you can listen to that at your leisure. But what I got out of it was that for some, and I’m going to put myself in this category, particularly when it comes to credit and debt, of course, it was, it was that that bill at the end of the month was really all I paid attention to, right? But to get your financial house in order and to start 2026 on the right foot, you have to be active in your own finances, right? Yeah, you can’t just bite and forget it.

Clinton Wilkins
No. And as much as you seek the advice of someone, specifically for us, if you seek the advice of an unbiased mortgage professional, that’s one piece of the pie. You have to be an active player in your own situation. And I think sometimes people forget that one of the big things that I advocate for is to make it automatic. Bill payments. Make it automatic, your minimum credit card on your minimum payment on your credit card, make it automatic. When your savings are set up automatically and have that come out when your payroll comes out. Everyone has great intentions of paying things on time. Saving and investing. But really, the people who are doing it are the ones who are getting it set up so that it happens automatically. Because it’s just human nature. Things come up, people forget, and everyone’s busy these days. I see so many folks in my office who have had previous credit change challenges, and sometimes it’s as silly as they’re missing a $10 minimum payment on a credit card. Really, today, there’s no need for it. The majority of credit card companies, for example, offer an automatic payment. So get it set up, set it and forget it. And, credit products like a credit card, I think you need to also learn and get a handle on it, that it’s it’s meant for the short term. Really, we don’t want consumers carrying a balance on a credit card. Lots of us do, but when we’re trying to get our financial house in order, it’s about tackling some of this highest-interest debt first.

<strong>Income Sources and Self-Employment</strong>

Dan Ahlstrand
And we also had a discussion earlier this month, and I thought it was that was valuable as well, that when it comes to income sources that you have and and just trying to figure out what your monthly income is, it’s not just the paycheck that is your income source. There’s, there’s several things that people may overlook when it comes to that calculation.

Clinton Wilkins
There’s so many other things that we take into consideration, specifically, when we’re looking at qualifying someone for a mortgage, things like child tax benefit, or maybe someone’s gone through a separation and they have child support or spousal support, we take those things into consideration, pensions, CPP, OAS, other pensions that people may have, and a lot of consumers, more and more Dan every single day, are becoming self employed. And that can be very, very daunting, because a lot of self-employed people they’ve walked into their bank branch and they’ve been declined because maybe they’re newly self-employed, or maybe their income isn’t high enough to qualify for what they want, or maybe they don’t have their income tax filed on time. God forbid, but we deal with a lot of self-employed borrowers, and there are almost more programs available for self-employed and different ways to make it happen than there are for someone who just has a pay stub. So we’re really excited about dealing with self-employed borrowers. And more and more Canadians are becoming self-employed all the time. Like, for example, this week, we saw a customer who worked for a plumbing company for the last 10 years, and recently, just this year, became self-employed. Normally, back in the old days, they’d have to be self-employed for two years, get two full years of tax returns before we’d even look at that customer for a prime lending type product. But we were able to get that approved with a bank, lender, and prime mortgage. We were able to justify their income and show their previous history in terms of qualifying them today. So certainly, there is definitely a bigger appetite to help self-employed people. And I think there are a lot of different programs out there that we can certainly take advantage of to help.

Dan Ahlstrand
We’ve got some really, really special guests that are going to join us on the program today. They are going to give us a perspective of things, not only here in HRM, but across the country. But Clinton, you’re in it, you’re doing it every day. How’s the market? And we’ve read stories. I’ve seen stories about the market slowing down across the rest of the country. What’s happening in HRM, and what can we expect in, say, the first quarter of 26?

<strong>Real Estate Market in HRM</strong>

Clinton Wilkins
I would say we’re not in a bubble. Dan, I think our market in Atlantic Canada is very similar to the same type of story that they’re seeing in the prairies. It is very stable. The one thing I will say that’s going on in Halifax is we have a lot more listings than we did here a year ago, and things are sitting on the market for a longer period of time. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think the market here is more balanced, but we still have seen price growth. Even though we’re seeing properties sit for a longer period of time, we’re seeing that prices still increase. So it’s still a good investment, and I think that. There are more opportunities for buyers to get into the marketplace. And later in the show, we’ll talk about first-time homebuyers. And if 2026 is going to be the right time for some of these people to enter the real estate market. For me, the best time to buy a home is yesterday. Really, when we’re looking at the consumers that purchased homes even five years ago, Dan, many of them, their homes have doubled in value. So, I think that’s going to continue to be the trend. I don’t know if their prices are necessarily going to increase that quickly, but I’m very comfortable saying that we’re going to see these prices increase between three and 5% and I think that’s normal, and I think that’s definitely going to be more balanced.

Dan Ahlstrand
Clinton has been on this program for many weeks now. We’ve been talking about property tax, and we’ve been talking about a hot topic, oh my goodness. And and city council is looking at a 10 and a half percent increase in property tax. We know there are some significant increases coming in electricity rates. We know there’s a 36% increase in water rates. Is that keeping people out? Do you think? Are they waiting to see what happens with that or or is the with all the listings that you’re telling us about, or are people saying, Nope, good time to get out, good time to buy.

<strong>Impact of Property Taxes</strong>

Clinton Wilkins
I really don’t think it has a huge impact. To be honest, I think our property taxes were probably on the lower side. For a long time. Everything has gone up in cost. Dan, the one thing I will say bison the property taxes are going up 10% if that’s the actual tax rate. Obviously, HRM is taking advantage of the assessments going up as well, but there are a lot of people who still have a cap on, so I think it’s going to hopefully rebalance what’s going on in the tax scheme. There are, By and large, our taxes are around 1% of our assessment value. There are certainly a lot of municipalities out there in Nova Scotia that have taxes that are 150% higher than what we’re paying in Halifax. Yes, our taxes are high, but we are very service-rich, I think, and I hope that HRM will balance out the increase. They’ve certainly had some of this advantage of the assessments going up, but I think the real thing that HRM needs to focus on, Dan, is getting some construction starts going. We need to increase the tax base, maybe more so than focusing on increasing taxes for the individual homeowners who already own a home. We have a 220-year hangover of not doing construction here in Halifax. Yes, we have a lot of cranes in the sky, but that should have been years ago, us getting this amount of construction going. People who are renting are very squeezed. We have some of the highest rents compared to homes in the country. We need these units to come online to help soften that rental market. And as me saying, as a mortgage broker and someone who really wants to promote people buying homes, we need rentals just as much so we can free up some of this lower-cost real estate. Think about the little old lady and the little old man who are not going into an apartment because they can’t afford it, or there weren’t any apartments for them to have. It has prevented first-time home buyers from getting into the market. So it’s really hurting all verticals of real estate. But we need all types of construction. We need single families. We need rows. We need multi-families. We need all sizes and types of real estate construction going on in Halifax, and that’s what I want to see HRM promoting, so we get a higher tax base.

Dan Ahlstrand
This is a very special edition of Mortgagee 101. We’re live here today for the next so, 45 minutes or so, as we mentioned, we’ve got a just a real list of really good guests that are going to come in and impart their knowledge upon us. We’re going to continue to do that. Also, Clinton tells me that he brought something along with him that he’s going to give away at the end of this show.

Clinton Wilkins
We are I’m going to give it a little teaser here before we throw it into a commercial. We are going to be giving away two tickets, two VIP tickets to Crave, which is happening here in January. It is an event that’s put on by the Progress Club here in Halifax. The actual event is January 24, and these VIP tickets are going on sale today at noon, but we’re gonna have a lucky listener. We’re gonna give away two tickets. So we’ll open up the phone lines at the end of the show and give away two tickets. Beat the box office, right? Beat the box office. You’ll be the first person to get two tickets in your hot little hand for Craven January. And we are a sponsor of the event. We’re very proud to be able to sponsor it. The Progress Club does amazing work here around Halifax, and we have members of our team who are partners and on the Progress Club, so we’d love to support them.

Dan Ahlstrand
We’re taking our first break here on the live edition of Mortgage. 101, when we come back. Very pleased and had an opportunity to speak with him, and I know he’s looking forward to this. The chief operating officer for Sagan is Jim Spatali, and he will be joining us here in the studio with Clinton and me. You’re listening to the Todd Veinotte Show on a special Mortgage 101 edition.