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With interest rates still at historic lows, though they are apparently on their way up, a 25-year amortization can be whittled down, and thousands of dollars saved, by doing a basic mortgage checkup, according to the experts. “At least once a year, get into the habit of taking a look at what the market is offering in terms of rates and discussing whether it’s worth your while to renegotiate your mortgage or increase your payments,” says Martin Beaudry, a vice-president of lending at ING Direct. Any extra money you can apply – especially early on in mortgage payments – usually translates into significant savings over a 25-year period, he adds. Spring is an ideal time for a mortgage checkup because it’s the time you file your taxes, says Beaudry. If you are expecting a refund, applying that refund to your mortgage, rather than making a personal purchase, can save you significant money. For example, a $400 refund translates into at least $2,000 to $3,000 in interest savings, says Beaudry. Laura Parsons, of BMO Financial Group, cautions that there may be drawbacks in going with the cheapest mortgage rate you can find. She says most people don’t even review their mortgage documentation before signing them. Yet from bank to bank, every product is different, and the prepayment options can differ considerably. Going for the cheapest interest rate may mean forfeiting those cost-cutting privileges. So, be sure to ask if and when you’re allowed to make prepayments on your mortgage. “When you think about increasing your payments, even $100 makes a huge difference over time,” explains Parsons. “It’s a window of opportunity with prime rates so low for people to prepay.” As she says to clients, if you have three coffees a day, buy one fewer coffee and put that money toward your mortgage instead. To add fuel to the burning of your mortgage, opt for bimonthly or, even better, weekly payments, and you can shave four to six years off your repayment schedule. Paying an extra $3,000 once a year toward the principal on a $250,000 mortgage can result in interest savings of more than $40,000 on a mortgage with a 25-year amortization and a fixed rate of 4.19 per cent. Shopping around for a mortgage with the option of making lump-sum prepayments on each anniversary, and payment flexibility, also offer a safety net should you experience reduced income or unexpected expenses, Parsons said. Copyright Real Estate Weekly

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On July 5th, about 80 Downtown Eastside residents and friends marched from Pigeon Park to the site of Concord Pacific’s proposed condo development at 58 W. Hastings and then on to Concord’s glitzy Presentation Centre at the south end of Carrall St. At the Centre, the marchers chanted “Concord: Get Out!” over and over. Then Streams of Justice presented a tableau from the back of a pickup truck decked out with paper mache person labeled “Downtown Eastside” who wore a hangman’s noose around his neck. Dave Diewert presented this speech showing how the Downtown Eastside is being colonized by developers from outside the community who are denying the humanity of the community to justify destroying it:

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

What you are witnessing today is the tragic and unnecessary elimination of a real community at the hands of profiteering developers and supportive city officials.

Recall the explorers of old.

Sustained by financial backing from state and private funders, they sailed off to “discover” new lands, fuelled by a desire for untold wealth and resources.

Their journeys led them to distant places, where they encountered communities of people and complex cultures they did not know or understand. And indeed, the land was rich in resources and potential wealth-creation, and they earnestly longed to posssess it.

So they used their power to remove the people who stood in their way, through deceptive legal strategies, philosophical and theological argumentation, and the violent use of coercive force. Rooted in an ideology of cultural superiority, they destroyed indigenous people and their cultures to clear the way for their own appropriation of land and wealth.

Today we have new explorers; they are the large real estate developers who are invading the community of the Downtown Eastside in order to appropriate the land and acquire for themselves great wealth.

They build condos for wealthy city-dwellers and displace the current low-income residents of the neighborhood. They promote their efforts as creating “communities for world-class living” while the actual community of people struggling with poverty, ill-health and trauma are removed from serious consideration and criminalized.

Real estate speculation, increased rents, soft conversions, loss of land, and the influx of upscale amenities are the local fallout of this invasion of condo development, and it means displacement, eviction and increased homelessness for the people of this community.

And city officials applaud and approve this pattern of settlement (aka, community development). They imagine a mixed neighborhood, one more inhabitable for the “deserving” members of the society. Its proximity to the downtown core makes it an enviable place for aesthetic impulses. Using the rhetoric of “revitalization” and urban renewal, they give their stamp of approval to the numerous applications for development permits.

The Downtown Eastside is being appropriated into a scheme of upscale, world-class development, legitimated by city officials and their regional plans, and fuelled by an ideology of free-market investment and visions of a world-class city.

This inevitably entails the loss of land and services for the majority low-income residents of the neighborhood, the displacement of individuals from their homes, the increase of homelessness, and above all, the destruction of a real, vibrant, creative, courageous community.

For this we grieve … and we resist, by bearing witness to what is happening and by formulating our own vision of this neighborhood, and demanding its implementation.

We are here, and together we are strong.

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