Advanced Equity Lending Corp

10/18/2026

UFC Fight Night. Steak on the BBQ, homemade fries and a good night to stay in.

10/15/2026

Mid October in Vancouver and breakfast in the sunshine. Hard to beat this after a good workout. What we put in is the fuel for our day, starting mine off right!

10/14/2026

“Now we can sleep as all pressure is gone.”

Sometimes one email reminds me exactly why I love what I do.

After sending out a little Thanksgiving message with a family photo from the pumpkin patch, I received this unexpected reply from a client I helped with a reverse mortgage.

And it made my day.

What struck me wasn’t the thank you. It was what he said about finally being able to sleep at night.

Think about that for a moment.

They still watch their spending. Old habits die hard. 😊

But that financial pressure they’d been carrying? Gone.

After all my years in the mortgage business, I’ve learned that it’s rarely just about dollars and cents.

It’s about peace of mind, having choices, and sometimes simply getting a good night’s sleep.

That’s what makes helping people so rewarding.

Thought this was worth sharing. ❤️

10/13/2026

Pumpkin patch with the crew 🎃 Lots to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! ❤️

10/05/2026

Finally made the Top 2%

Not income
Not fitness
Not intelligence

Sleeping 😂

WHOOP has officially named me a “Human Metronome.”

63 years old and apparently my greatest athletic achievement is going unconscious at roughly the same time every night.

Take the wins where you can get them. 😂

10/02/2026

I ran the numbers on turning one house into four in Coquitlam.

I can see why a builder would walk away.

Politicians keep talking about more affordable housing. Then came the zoning changes allowing 4 homes on a residential lot.

Sounds good. So I looked into it.

Beyond buying the property and building the homes, you have to budget another $400,000–$500,000 in charges and required servicing costs.

That includes City Development Cost Charges, Amenity Cost Charges, Metro Vancouver water and sewer development charges, TransLink charges and School Site Acquisition Charges.

Then there are permit fees, required street improvements and servicing upgrades.

You also have to finance all of that.

We hear that builders should lower their prices. But they can only go so low before there’s no point taking on the project. And buyers can only pay so much.

That’s where this whole idea runs into trouble.

I understand roads, water and sewer cost money. But if more affordable housing is something politicians want delivered, governments need to help pay for the infrastructure.

They’ve announced development-charge reductions. Good. Make sure small projects like this get meaningful relief.

I’d go further. Waive the development levies on these projects and put provincial and federal infrastructure money towards the necessary upgrades.

Otherwise, we’re asking builders and buyers to make numbers work that governments have helped make unworkable.

The zoning may allow four homes.
But if the numbers don’t work, it’s all talk!

09/27/2026

09/23/2026

Here’s what I find interesting about the Sydney Sweeney controversy.

For years we’ve been told women should be free to decide how they present themselves and what empowerment looks like to them.

Then Sweeney does a provocative sports-themed ad and some accomplished female athletes say it sets women’s sport backwards.

Maybe they have a point. But here’s where it gets interesting.

Forget for a minute that the ad pulled more than 22 million views in its first couple of days. Forget that Novig, a relatively small sports prediction platform, suddenly had millions of people talking about it.

The real argument is that sexualizing women around sport takes women backwards.

Fair enough.

Except we’ve been mixing sexuality and sport for decades.

ESPN had its Body Issue with elite athletes posing n**e. Sports Illustrated has featured female athletes in its swimsuit issue for years, often framed around confidence, strength and empowerment.

So when the response becomes, “Yes, but Sydney Sweeney isn’t an athlete,” notice what changed.

Now the argument isn’t that sexuality and sport shouldn’t mix.

It’s about who gets to do it, under what circumstances, and whether everyone else approves.

That’s the part I find fascinating.

Sydney Sweeney made her choice. Other women are free to criticize it.

Both can be true.

But when empowerment starts to look like it needs an approval process, maybe the real debate isn’t about sexuality at all.

Maybe it’s about who gets to decide what an acceptable choice looks like.

You don’t have to like the ad.

You don’t have to agree with her choice.

But if freedom only works when people make the choices we approve of, it isn’t much of a principle.

That may be the real Sydney Sweeney test.

— Mark

09/22/2026

THERE ARE SOME PHONE CALLS A PARENT NEVER RECOVERS FROM.

I read this morning that another celebrity’s 27-year-old son had died. Police are investigating a suspected overdose. For a moment, you notice the famous name. Then the fame disappears and you see it for what it really is: a mother and father have lost their son.

I have two grown children and three grandchildren. I also have a few friends who have lost children. They still get up, go to work and find reasons to laugh because life somehow has to continue. But they don’t get over it. They simply learn how to carry it.

The older I get, the less I care whether my kids appear successful and the more I care whether they’re truly okay. They may grow up, get married and build families of their own, but you never stop being their dad. You never stop wondering what they might not be telling you.

We ask the easy questions. How’s work? How’s the family? Everything good? They say, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and most of us move on. But sometimes “I’m fine” really means, “I don’t know how to tell you.”

Maybe today we ask one more time: “No, really…how are you doing?” Then be quiet, listen without judging and resist trying to fix everything before they’ve finished speaking.

No matter how old they become, they’re still our children. Don’t wait for a reason to make the call.

09/16/2026

This comment got me thinking.

We’ve been told our whole lives to pay off the house and don’t touch the equity.

And generally, that’s pretty good advice.

But I think there comes a point where we have to ask what we were building all that equity for in the first place.

I talk to people every week who have $800,000, $1 million or more sitting in their home, yet they’re worried about money every month.

They’re putting off trips, watching what they spend, still making mortgage payments or simply not enjoying retirement the way they thought they would.

They did everything right. They built the wealth.

So why have we decided that the one pile of wealth they shouldn’t use is the one sitting in their house?

I’m certainly not saying everyone should get a reverse mortgage. I’ve told plenty of people not to.

But I also don’t think the goal should automatically be to leave as much equity in the house as possible while you restrict your own retirement.

Maybe for some people the smarter question is pretty simple:

What did I spend 30 or 40 years building all this equity for?