Buying Your First Home in British Columbia

Hey, it’s Mike from the HomeHappy Team here with your rate synopsis for September 2026. As expected, the Bank of Canada decided to make no change today. They’re under a lot of pressure from differing forces and chose just to stand on the sidelines, as they have since October of 2025. One of the factors that affects things is inflation, and we have had an increase in inflation, particularly since the Iran situation occurred back in March, and we haven’t had a solution to that, obviously. It keeps starting up again, and that has impacted all the world for inflation. We’ve all pretty well gone up, as you can see. However, it hasn’t got as high as some of the media expected, so it hasn’t affected the Bank of Canada in terms of their decision-making. Fixed rates have been impacted because they’re directly part of the market. It’s how the market moves based on the price of oil, which has gone up, and that’s caused bond yields both in the U.S. and in Canada to go up, and those are directly what affects the fixed rates. So they have climbed somewhat, as you can see, and that’s making an impact on what we could lock into right now. The next date to watch is not actually October 28th, when the Bank of Canada meets again. It’s actually September 16th, when the U.S. Fed is getting together, and a lot of people feel they’re going to make an increase in their Fed rate. So that’ll be interesting to watch. And with all of this, like anything, nobody can predict the future. It’s all guessing. Take a look at these stats from 2021, when the Bank of Canada told us all that they weren’t going to raise prime, and even just since last year, what the predictions were compared to what’s actually happened. So with everything, it’s always about you and your situation, not about what’s going on in the world. We can’t control that. So if you’d like a custom personal review of your situation, that’s what we’re here for. Thanks very much.

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Mike: Hey everybody, it’s Mike from the HomeHappy Team. I’m here with Dallas and Ian. Guys, introduce yourselves.

Dallas: Yeah, Dallas Crick with Hilbert & Crick Real Estate, out of Royal LePage.

Ian: Hey, and I’m Ian Flower with Okanagan Inspections, based here in Kelowna.

Mike: Great. Thanks for joining us, guys. It’s a topic that comes up with a lot of people: do I need an inspection? What is an inspection? Is an inspection an appraisal? All those things. So Ian, why don’t we start with you? Tell us a bit about what you do and how you got into it.

Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll start with a bit of my background, coming from construction and trades: understanding homes, building homes, renovating, tearing down old and putting up new. So we got to see homes at all different stages, from new builds to tear-downs, and what’s been done wrong and what’s been done right. As I gained experience and age, I also got aches and pains in the body, and it was a natural transition to go into the inspection world and transfer that knowledge. Why you want a home inspection is understanding the home and its current condition so you can make educated decisions. It’s one of the largest investments people make in their lifetime, whether that’s a residential or commercial property. So it’s understanding that home and its current condition so you can work with great agents like Dallas to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for.

Mike: So you never have to crawl in crawl spaces anymore?

Ian: Yeah. I’m a big guy, but you’d be shocked at the attic spaces and crawl spaces I get into. During a walk-through, you get that half hour to walk through the home and see if you like it, if that’s what you want to make your forever home. As an inspector, we’re not looking at the paint colours or whether your couch is going to fit. We’re in for two and a half hours, unobstructed. We’re on the roof, we’re in those attics, we’re in those crawl spaces. We’re looking at the mechanicals, the furnaces, the air conditioning, all the stuff you’re not really looking at, to make sure there are no hidden surprises for you.

Mike: Fantastic. Dallas, what does it mean to you when you’re helping clients and you can bring Ian in to work with you?

Dallas: To me, it’s a must. It’s such a small investment for a big investment. To spend that money to get an inspector in there to say, okay, here are some of the concerns we see, it’s priceless.

Mike: Yeah. And you just never know. People aren’t necessarily doing things wrong on purpose; they may just not know they’re supposed to do certain maintenance, or they don’t know what the three people before them in that home did. So it’s not that people are hiding things, it’s that you just don’t know what’s in there. And with your knowledge, I’m sure you see things people don’t even notice, and know that’s a trip wire to the next problem.

Ian: Exactly, Michael. To your point, how often do you get up in your attic? How often do you go down in those crawl spaces? We call it the belly of the beast. That’s where a lot of stuff is happening that you don’t really know about, whether that’s cracks in foundations and leaks, or in the attic. Something common we see is dryer vents or bathroom vents that have fallen off the roof vents, so all that warm, moist air is going into those spaces. Unfortunately, that creates mold and things that aren’t good to be breathing in. So it’s good to get that peace of mind and that overall evaluation.

Mike: It’s no different than going to a doctor every once in a while and getting a physical, especially once you get a little older and things aren’t quite working as they’re meant to. And like you said, Dallas, it’s such a massive investment; to go in blind just seems kind of crazy, doesn’t it?

Dallas: Yeah, it really is. A good story: I was talking to my naturopath. I sold him a home, and we had black mold in the attic. I said, we see it in a lot of homes, and he really laid out how bad this stuff is for you. I started going down the rabbit hole on YouTube, and, okay, yeah, this stuff has got to get cleared out.

Mike: Well, that’s a great introduction. Thank you very much for being here, guys. We’re going to wrap it there, and we’ll come back and talk to Ian more. Thanks for joining.

Ian: All right. Thanks, guys.

Dallas Crick, Hilbert & Crick Real Estate: So when the clients come in to sign, what’s all involved in the conveyancing side of it?

Dani Brito, Acorn Law: Well, that’s a really great question, and a lot of people don’t know. Either it’s their first time buying a home, or it’s been a long time, or they’re buying from out of province, and the process here is very different from Alberta, Ontario or anywhere else. We want to be involved as early as possible, once the offer is accepted. At that stage our role is advice; we want to make sure they have the advice they need. Once conditions come off and the deposit is paid, that’s when we start getting information from various parties. We get mortgage instructions, we get conveyancing instructions from the real estate brokerage, we get tax information and strata information, and then we piece everything together to prepare the closing documents. That’s the transfer, but most importantly from the client’s perspective, it’s the breakdown of the numbers and how this is all going to work. Whereas a mortgage broker talks about a down payment, what we need when you’re signing is the total balance required to close. The closing documents take into account the deposit you’ve already paid, the purchase price, the property transfer tax if that’s applicable, and adjustments for strata fees, property taxes and everything else. The goal is to give that to you a couple of days before closing, so you have time to go to the bank and get a bank draft. A bank draft is similar to a normal cheque, but the bank pulls the money out of your account right away and puts it onto a physical piece of paper. That paper is very important, and it needs to make it to the lawyer’s office. We take it and put it into our trust account. You sign your closing documents, we send everything back to your lender for a final checkmark, and they press a button to send us the money. On the closing date, we get the mortgage money into our trust account, we pair it with the money from the bank draft, and then we have every penny we need to close. At that stage we hit register, the property goes into your name, and we send out a congratulations to you and your realtor. It’s home sweet home!

Thinking about a mortgage? You need to know about the stress test. It’s a rule set by Canada’s banking regulator to make sure you can afford your payments even if interest rates go up in the future. It helps protect you and the housing market. So how does it work? When you apply for a mortgage, your lender doesn’t qualify you at the low rate you’re offered. Instead, they use a higher stress test rate. This qualifying rate is the higher of two options: your actual mortgage rate plus 2%, or a fixed benchmark rate. If you pass, meaning you can handle the payments at that higher theoretical rate, you qualify. But because you have to qualify at a higher rate, the biggest impact is that you may be approved for a smaller mortgage amount than you initially expected. The stress test can feel like a hurdle, but it’s really about building a solid financial foundation for your home buying journey. It provides you with a crucial buffer if rates climb later on. The HomeHappy Team can run the numbers and help you find the best strategy to pass the test with confidence.