A report from the Globe and Mail. "Navin Seepaul is a 29-year-old single dad who makes $30,000 a year as a barber. He owns a $1-million house in Brampton, a sprawling suburb northwest of Toronto. Each month, the payments on his roughly $700,000 mortgage are $4,300. On top of that, he has $24,000 in credit card debt. 'The more you work, the more you spend,' says Mr. Seepaul. 'What is $1,500? What is $2,000? Let me just run this credit card here.’ A lot of people do it.'"

"To help pay the bills – even just the monthly interest charges are staggering – he rents out his basement to three or four students, and two truck drivers rent bedrooms on his second floor. At any given time, the young father has six vehicles parked on his property."

"Welcome to the Canadian suburbs, circa 2019, where the country’s debt problem is at its worst, and where the dream of owning a home on a leafy street with a garage and a lush yard for the kids is, for many, a long way from reality. As rising house prices in Toronto sent people rushing to the suburbs, prices jumped in Brampton. The average selling price for a detached house in the city has tripled over the past decade, from $312,918 to $908,354. In Toronto, meanwhile, the cost of a detached home rose from $522,200 to $1.36-million."

"It’s making Brampton unaffordable, says Jas Takhar, a realtor whose work spans the Toronto region, including Brampton: 'We have a saying in my office. It’s ‘Drive till you qualify.’ So you can’t buy in Toronto, you can’t buy in Brampton, you have to go to Hamilton, you have to go to Kitchener, you have to go to Durham.'"

"Across the country in Edmonton, Stacy Lee and her partner, Peter Halladay, are struggling with the income side of the debt-service equation. In 2015, they paid $415,000 for a 1,500-square-foot detached house. With credit card payments and car loans of $1,188 a month, along with the monthly mortgage of $2,225, the couple’s total debt payments will reach $40,956 this year. Of that, $14,000 is interest. Add in childcare, groceries, gas and other expenses, and Ms. Lee expects to spend more than $82,000 this year – far outstripping their expected after-tax pay of $74,760."

"'We are probably less than a paycheque away from being in trouble,' says Ms. Lee, who is looking for a second job – any job – to bridge the gap. 'I am $1,000 in the hole every month just to pay the bills, not to pay any debt.'"

"'I can’t go to my bank now and shift my Visa balance onto my line of credit,' says Scott Terrio, manager of consumer insolvency for Hoyes, Michalos Licensed Insolvency Trustees in Ontario. 'That is a big deal. It doesn’t sound like much. But that’s what people were doing for the last five years. When people start running out of options, that’s when you’ve got trouble coming, according to Mr. Terrio, adding that insolvencies in Ontario are increasing at a pace not seen since 2009. 'When those doors start to close,' he says, 'I think the next insolvency peak will blow 2009 away.'"

From Global News. "If you’re in the market for 'prime vacant land' in Regina’s downtown, the price of the former Capital Pointe site has plunged as the hole becomes increasingly shallow. An updated listing from Cushman & Wakefiled Regina, lists 1971 Albert Street’s value at $2 million. The original listing pegged the property at $8.5 million. No reason for the 76 per cent price drop is apparent in the property’s listing. Global News has reached out to the realtors handling the file, but neither was immediately available."

From Castanet. "The South Okanagan real estate market continued its rebound in August, according to the South Okanagan Real Estate Board. In the first eight months of 2019, a total of 1,232 were sold — down 18 per cent from the same time last year. Penticton realtor Sergej Sinicin said it was a different story further south in the Kaleden and Okanagan Falls areas."

"'The average sale price dropped by $130,000 in that neighbourhood south of Penticton, so that's really the only area that took a bit of a hit in 2019 [August],' Sinicin said."

"Residential listings have increased since August of last year, with a South Okanagan Real Estate Board report indicating 1,447 residential active listings at the end of August 2019, an increase of 15.7 per cent over the same time last year. That's a four-year-high."

From CTV Edmonton. "With the largest price drop in Canada, Edmonton seems like a good bet to buy a new home. In the last five years, new home prices have actually decreased in Edmonton, falling from $476,261 in 2013 to $458,320 in 2018, according to CMHC."

"It pointed out lower demand coincided with Edmonton’s July unemployment rate of 7.5 per cent, which hasn’t been that high since October 2017. The government agency says 'the oversupply of homes, combined with unfavourable market conditions, continued to lower new house prices' in several Canadian cities including Edmonton. It said the price drop has local builders offering promotions and rebates to try to stimulate the market."

The Daily Hive. "There’s been a recent trend of developers giving away incentives to buyers in Metro Vancouver, including offers for free wine, avocado toast, and even living expenses for a year — but one Vancouver area developer is pulling out all the stops. Century Group is upping their marketing efforts to clear out its remaining townhomes by offering each new buyer a Model 3 Tesla, which comes with a price tag of $55,000."

"The executive townhomes, ranging from two to four bedrooms, started pre-sales nearly two years ago, in October 2017 — with pricing starting just over $1-million. There are 57 planned for the complex. Developers have increasingly been forced to increase efforts to market various housing developments during the Metro Vancouver housing slowdown, and this is truly the Tesla on top of the cake. As developers continue to ramp up their marketing efforts, and now that we’ve already somehow arrived at free Teslas — there’s no guessing what could be next. "