August 19 Is Now A Mortgage Date
Good Morning. Three things moved your clients' mortgage pricing last week, and not one of them was decided in Canada: a proclamation signed in Washington, a tanker lane in the Red Sea, and an insurer's underwriting desk in Thunder Bay. The Bank of Canada is parked until September 2, so none of the usual domestic levers are in play. CMHC's updated outlook, published in the middle of it all, quietly cut the construction pipeline for three straight years.
Top Story
August 19 Is Now A Mortgage Date
On July 20, President Trump signed three proclamations imposing an additional 50 per cent duty on a list of Canadian goods, effective 12:01 a.m. on August 19. The mechanism separates this from two years of trade noise. The proclamations invoke Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, dormant since the Truman era and never used this way. It requires no investigation and no agency process: the President signs, thirty days pass, the duty attaches.
The scope is narrower than the headline suggests and stranger than you would expect. Three annexes cover roughly US$20 billion of goods, about five per cent of everything Canada ships south — dairy, alcohol, and a third basket of four hundred-odd tariff lines sweeping in furniture, textiles, wine, cement and hockey sticks. Energy, potash and existing Section 232 goods are excluded. CUSMA is not: no carve-out appears in any of the three proclamations, and Section 338 carries no expiry date. Counsel on both sides expect litigation.
The bond market did not wait for August. Canada's five-year yield hit 3.28 per cent on Wednesday, its highest since May, as Brent crude pushed past US$100 on renewed Gulf strikes and threats to Red Sea shipping. It eased to 3.22 by Friday, still well above where it started the week. Fixed rates price off that yield, not the overnight rate, and the lowest five-year offers have spent July just under four per cent. That is the number now under pressure. Lenders reprice on sustained moves, which is why the next three weeks matter more than any single close.
No offset is coming from the other direction. The Bank of Canada held at 2.25 per cent on July 15 for a sixth consecutive decision and does not meet again until September 2, well after the tariffs land. Variable borrowers get stability; fixed-rate shoppers take the full bond move with nothing to cushion it.
For realtors: Any pre-approval quoted three weeks ago may describe a budget that no longer exists. Confirm the number with the broker before your buyer writes, not after the financing condition is running.
For mortgage brokers: Pull every rate hold expiring before the end of September and call those clients this week. A hold taken in early July may be the best paper your client sees this year, and extensions get harder once lenders reprice.
For everyone: August 19 is a date your clients can act against. The cost of locking early is small and knowable. The cost of waiting is not.
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Rest of the News
CMHC Marks Down The Pipeline
CMHC published its summer outlook last Wednesday and cut construction in every year it forecasts. Starts fall seven per cent this year to 241,400, another 7.5 per cent in 2027, and five per cent more in 2028, bottoming at 211,900. Resale sales were trimmed to 457,200 and the national average price to $675,200, both reversals of February's projection. The agency blames development costs, thin margins, unsold inventory, and population growth that has slowed to a crawl. Ontario and British Columbia are singled out as the provinces expected to stay historically weak.
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Condos Sell, But Nobody Builds
New condo sales across Toronto and Hamilton rose 52 per cent in the second quarter to 702 units — the first annual gain since 2023, and still 86 per cent below the ten-year average. Read one layer down, and the number splits. Completed-unit sales more than tripled, carried by investment groups buying finished inventory in bulk. Pre-construction sales fell 80 per cent, to fifty units across the entire region. Ontario's HST rebate is part of why: it requires construction to begin before March 31, 2027, a deadline buyers cannot control, and developers cannot promise.
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Insurers Pause Binders As Fires Burn
Northwestern Ontario had 122 active wildfires as of Sunday evening, down from 146 a week earlier — but evacuation orders remain in force, and the largest fire is still out of control at more than 313,000 hectares. The transaction problem is insurance. Carriers have stopped issuing new binder letters in active-fire areas, and properties inside Thunder Bay are being assessed case by case. Insurance conditions cannot be satisfied on ordinary timelines, lenders will not fund without coverage, and a binder can be withdrawn before closing if the property sits in a restricted zone. The Insurance Bureau of Canada notes no legislation governs any of it — each carrier sets its own moratorium, easing as evacuation orders lift.
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Real And RE/MAX Face Shareholders
The merger folding RE/MAX into The Real Brokerage reaches its shareholder vote on August 14, with both meetings held virtually the same morning. Securities filings set out the mechanics: a holding company to be renamed Real REMAX Group Inc., a ten-for-one consolidation of Real shares, and an election for RE/MAX Class A holders to take stock or $13.80 in cash. Former Real shareholders would hold roughly sixty per cent. Justice granted early antitrust termination on July 13, clearing the last hurdle before the vote.
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SUDBURY
While Ontario's average price fell 2.5 per cent in June, Sudbury set a record. The board reported 339 sales, up 15.7 per cent and the strongest June in five years, generating $172.6 million in volume — a June record and the largest single month in the board's history. The average price rose 1.7 per cent to $509,204 and the benchmark held flat at $514,800, one of the few Ontario markets where prices moved up rather than down.
What makes it unusual is that the surge arrived alongside supply, not despite it: 557 new listings, the most in any June in a decade, and 781 active listings, a five-year high for the month. Months of inventory still tightened to 2.3 from 2.5, against a long-run norm nearer three. One caution before anyone calls it a boom — year-to-date sales remain down 10.2 per cent, and the year-to-date average price has moved just 0.1 per cent.
For realtors: Sellers reading national coverage arrive expecting a correction that has not reached them. Sudbury is absorbing a decade-high listing count and still tightening — the pricing conversation here is the opposite of the one your GTA colleagues are having.
For mortgage brokers: Rising volumes at just over $500,000 keep most files inside insured territory and away from the uninsured pricing squeeze. Weigh that against wildfire insurance availability, which is now a live underwriting variable across the northeast.
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Quick Hits
- TORONTO IS SHRINKING: the city's population has declined for the first time outside the pandemic, a reversal for the market that has driven national demand for a decade.
- BUILDERS ARE CAUGHT BOTH WAYS: residential construction costs rose another 0.5 per cent in the second quarter after a 0.7 per cent rise in the first, while industrial product prices are running 12.4 per cent above a year ago.
- INVENTORY IS EASING, NOT VANISHING: Ontario's months of inventory fell to 4.2 in June from 4.7 a year earlier, still well above the long-run norm of 2.7 months.
- BUYERS ARE BACK IN FRONT: the national sales-to-new-listings ratio reached 50.2 per cent in June, the first time it has been above 50 all year.
Tip of the Week
Build In Insurance Time
Most offers give the insurance condition the same three days as everything else, assuming coverage is a formality.
Most offers give the insurance condition the same three days as everything else, assuming coverage is a formality. It is not a formality in a moratorium. Ask for five business days on any property near an active-fire region, confirm the binder is issued rather than quoted before you waive, and have your seller keep their own policy in force through closing rather than cancelling on it. The version of this conversation you have at the offer stage takes five minutes. The version you have on closing day may not work at all.
Ontario's average resale price came in at $831,595 in June. How far was that below June 2025?
Last week's issue was about a market that had finally started agreeing with itself. This week the disagreement comes from outside — and the useful thing to notice is that none of it answers to the levers you normally watch. No rate announcement rewrites a tariff schedule, and no policy decision issues a binder letter. For the next three weeks the advantage belongs to whoever shortens the gap between a client's decision and their signature. Wednesday brings the Bank's July deliberations, and August 19 brings the tariffs. Between those two dates sit most of the rate holds your clients are carrying right now. We will know by next Tuesday whether lenders moved ahead of the deadline or decided to wait it out.
See you next Tuesday.
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