Advanced Equity Lending Corp, 8035 Reigate Road, Burnaby, BC (2026)

08/30/2026

Funny how something can mean more almost 10 years later than it did when you first chose it.

I was never really a tattoo guy.

My dad had passed away a couple of years earlier and my son who already had a few said if you get one I’ll get the same one.

I think he was shocked when I actually took him up on it. I think I was too.

That was really the only reason I did it.

I chose a compass with a cross in the middle. My thinking back then was pretty simple. Life takes you in all kinds of directions. You make some good decisions you make some bad ones, you change course a few times and every once in a while wonder how you ended up where you are. 😂

But I liked the idea of having a cross right in the middle of all those directions. Something in the middle that keeps you centered.

Family, Values, some kind of belief, whatever it is that pulls on you and helps you find your way.

Long story short, we got the same tattoo.

At the time I just thought it was just a cool thing for him and I to do together. Then this picture popped up in my memories. It got me thinking.
A lot of life has happened since then.

My wife and I raised a daughter and a son. Our daughter married a great guy and together they’ve given us two beautiful granddaughters.

Our son got married and they just welcomed their first little girl.

So somehow we went from raising two kids to now watching those two kids build families of their own and three little girls have been added to ours.

That changes the way I look at this tattoo. I used to think the compass was about direction. Now I think it’s more about what keeps you centred while everything around you changes.

My wife, my daughter and her family, my son and his family, and now those three little girls have given it a whole different meaning.

And I kind of like the fact that I probably understand it better now than I did when I chose it.

Hopefully still lots of directions to go.

08/26/2026

Summer of ’66
Celebrating Gino’s 60th

08/25/2026

Funny how “sustainable” everything looks from an ivory tower.

Scotia’s comments on the latest Canada–U.S. tariff fight.
The damage will be sustainable.

That stopped me.

Maybe, on a national spreadsheet, Scotia is right.
Maybe Canada absorbs it.
Maybe GDP holds up.
Maybe the national unemployment rate barely moves.

But tell that to the person who loses their job.
The business owner who can’t make payroll.
Or the family sitting around the kitchen table wondering how they’re going to make next month’s mortgage payment.

That’s the problem with words like sustainable.

They’re easy to throw around when you’re not the one being asked to sustain the damage.

From an ivory tower, it’s an economic adjustment.
From a kitchen table, it can change someone’s life.

So maybe the question isn’t:

Can Canada sustain the damage?

It’s:

Sustainable for whom?

08/24/2026

I was having my morning coffee and came across a story about foot-washing stations at two Texas airports

The headline caught my eye because I honestly wondered:
Who is washing their feet at an airport and why?

So I kept reading.

Muslim travellers were reportedly washing their feet in bathroom sinks before prayers. The airports said it was creating a potential safety hazard.

So they installed dedicated foot-washing stations.

And I have to admit, my first reaction was:
Okay… I can understand the hazard.

Water on the floor. Sinks being used for something they weren’t designed for. Fair enough.

But then I found myself asking a different question:
Why was the solution to build a new facility?

Why not simply say:
You can’t wash your feet in the bathroom sinks.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Because this really doesn’t have to be about religion or anyone’s personal beliefs. It’s a broader question about how we handle shared public spaces.

When a particular practice creates a problem, should the public space be changed to accommodate the practice?

Or should the person sometimes be expected to adjust the practice to fit the public space?

I can understand why the airports did what they did.
I can also understand why people are looking at it and asking:

Why are we redesigning public facilities instead of simply saying, “You can’t do that here”?

That seems like a fair question.
What do you think?

08/22/2026

This may surprise you...

There is a country artist called **Breaking Rust**. Millions of streams. A gravelly country voice. The cowboy image.

And his song *Walk My Walk* actually reached ** #1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart.**

There’s just one rather important detail.

**Breaking Rust isn’t a real person.**

The singer is AI-generated. The voice isn’t his. The face isn’t his.

There is no “him.”

I know we’ve reached some pretty crazy levels with AI, but this one really got me thinking.

AI can now create people who look completely real, clone someone’s voice, create videos of people appearing to say things they never said, write the song, sing the song, create the artist and create his image.

And apparently produce something people actually want to listen to millions of times.

I’ve been arranging mortgages for 30+ years, and I’ve watched a LOT of technology come and go over those years.

Fax machines became email. Paper became PDFs. Newspaper ads became Google. Signatures became DocuSign. Meetings became Zoom.

Every one of those technologies changed how we communicated.

But this feels different.

Because AI may actually change who we think we’re communicating with.

And that got me thinking about something I never expected technology to make more valuable:

Being real.

A real name. A real reputation. A real history.

People who know where to find you. People you’ve dealt with for years. People who will tell someone else:

I’ve known him for years. Call him.

Maybe that’s where all of this eventually leads.

The easier it becomes to manufacture the appearance of credibility, the more valuable **actual credibility** becomes.

And perhaps that’s the ultimate irony of AI.

It can give you an answer in seconds. It can make you sound experienced. It can make you look successful.

Apparently, it can even create an artist capable of reaching #1 on a Billboard chart.

But there’s one thing I don’t think it can manufacture.

A past.

I’ve got 32 years of one.

Turns out that might be worth more than I thought.

08/19/2026

A mortgage typically lasts about 25 years.
But Statistics Canada just released figures stating households aged 55–64 are now carrying much more mortgage debt.

If you bought a house 25 or 30 years ago and simply made the payments, shouldn’t the mortgage be nearly gone?

Of course it should.

But after more than 30 years in this business, I’ve watched what happens between the day someone buys their first home and the day they retire.

They move.
They renovate.
They refinance.
They consolidate debt.
They help their kids.
They buy out a spouse.
They start a business.
They hit a rough patch.

Sometimes they simply use the equity they’ve built to live their life. And every once in a while, the mortgage clock gets started again.

That’s why I think we’ve been asking the wrong retirement question.

It isn’t simply:
Will your mortgage be paid off by retirement?
It’s:
What role is your home going to play in your retirement?

Because for a growing number of Canadians, the house isn’t just somewhere they live. It’s also the largest financial asset they’ve spent 30 or 40 years building.

And figuring out how or whether to use that equity may become one of the most important financial decisions they make.

A mortgage may start as a 25-year loan
Life has a funny way of resetting the clock

08/18/2026

I cancelled a mortgage appointment this morning.

Not because I couldn’t find a way to do the deal.

Because I didn’t think I should.

The homeowner told me the property was worth around $1.9 million.

Approximately $1.6 million was already owing.

And the plan was to borrow even more to consolidate debt.

There are times when using home equity can solve a financial problem.

And there are times when another mortgage simply pushes the problem further down the road.

This looked like the second one.

So I cancelled the appointment and told him what I thought he should consider instead.

Selling.
Clearing the debt.
And giving himself a financial reset.

He replied with one word:

“Okay.”

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that getting someone a mortgage isn’t always the win.

Sometimes the win is telling them not to get one.

If you’re sitting on equity and wondering whether borrowing against it actually improves your situation, that’s the first question worth answering.

The mortgage comes second.

08/18/2026

I was at a party this weekend and someone asked:

“What does the bond market have to do with my mortgage rate?”

Here’s the simplest way I know to explain it.

A bank can put money into a very safe 5-year Government of Canada bond and earn a return.

Let’s say that return is 3.5%.

Then you come along and ask the bank to lend you money for a 5-year mortgage.

You’re riskier than the Government of Canada.

So the bank needs to earn more from you.

Maybe your mortgage rate is 5.5%.

That’s the connection.

If 5-year bond yields rise, banks usually want more for 5-year fixed mortgages.

If bond yields fall, fixed rates often have room to come down.

But variable rates are different.

Variable mortgages and lines of credit are generally tied to Prime.

And Prime is heavily influenced by the Bank of Canada.

So here’s the easiest way to remember it:

FIXED RATE?
WATCH BONDS.

VARIABLE RATE OR LINE OF CREDIT?
WATCH THE BANK OF CANADA.

That’s the “ohhh… now I get it” version.

08/14/2026

Every day I deal with home values and the equity available.

I look at appraisals.
Mortgage balances.
What a property is worth.
How much equity someone has built.

After more than 30 years, you get pretty used to looking at a home as numbers on a page.

Then you see what families in the Okanagan are going through right now.

People leaving their homes with almost no notice.
Some not knowing what they’ll come back to.

And it makes all those numbers feel pretty small.
Because an appraisal can tell you what a house is worth.
It can’t tell you what a **home** is worth.

It doesn’t know about the marks on the wall where you measured the kids.
The kitchen everyone somehow ends up standing in.
The chair somebody always sits in.
The photographs.
The Christmas mornings.
The backyard dinners.

The completely ordinary days you never thought you’d miss until there was a chance they could be gone.

I make my living helping people access the equity in their homes.
I know how important that equity can be.
Sometimes it solves a serious financial problem.
Sometimes it gives someone enough breathing room to stay in the home they love.

But watching what is happening in B.C. right now is a pretty good reminder that **equity is only one measure of a home’s value.**

The other part can’t be borrowed against.
It can’t be appraised.

And you usually don’t realize quite how valuable it is until something threatens to take it away.

Thinking about everyone who’s been displaced, everyone who’s lost a home, and the firefighters and first responders out there trying to protect them.

A house has a market value.

A home has a value no appraiser could ever calculate.

08/12/2026

THE BANK OF CANADA IS ON HOLD.
YOUR MORTGAGE RATE ISN’T.

Interesting, huh?

For months Canadians have been trained to wait for one thing.

The Bank of Canada announcement.

Cut rates. Good.
Hold rates. Nothing changes.

Except that’s not how fixed mortgages work.

Canada’s 5-year bond yield recently pushed up to around 3.32%.

TD and Scotiabank have already increased some fixed mortgage rates.

The Bank of Canada?
Did nothing.
Here’s the part worth knowing.

Fixed mortgage rates don’t need the Bank of Canada’s permission to go up.

They’re watching the bond market.

And the bond market is currently watching inflation, oil, government debt, the economy and, yes, another Canada-U.S. tariff showdown.

So while millions of Canadians wait for the next Bank of Canada announcement…the market may already have made its move.

This is why I sigh a little when someone tells me:

“I’m waiting for rates to come down.”
Which rates? And why are you so sure?

Maybe they do come down.
Maybe they don’t.

But after 30+ years in this business, I know one thing:

Hope is a perfectly good emotion.

It’s a lousy mortgage strategy.

Advanced Equity Lending Corp

08/30/2026

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