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By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt | March 2026 Est. reading time: 7-8 minutes If you've spent any time on social media, YouTube finance channels, Reddit housing threads or chatting in the driveway ith crazy uncle Dave in the last few years, you've seen or heard some version of this headline: "Canada's mortgage default wave is coming." It gets shared, it gets clicks, it gets people worried. And then... it doesn't happen. And then the same prediction gets recycled the followin

By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt | March 11th 2026 Est. reading time: 7 minutes If you've opened a news app in the last week, you've been hit from multiple directions. Tariffs. A war in Iran. Oil surging past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022. Stock markets selling off. The kind of headlines that make people freeze whether they're buying groceries, running a business, or trying to figure out whether now is the right time to buy or sell a home. So let me do somethi

Buying a Home in Chilliwack By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt | March 4th 2026 Est. reading time: 7 minutes Let me show you a number that stopped me in my tracks when I pulled the December stats. Active listings in Chilliwack finished 2025 at their highest level for that month in over a decade; sitting  41.3% above the 10-year average . We had 922 homes on the market heading into the new year. By January, only 115 of them sold. Read that again. Nearly a thousand homes availa

By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt | Fraser Valley Real Estate Reading time: ~7 minutes There's a conversation I have more and more often these days. A homeowner (usually in their late 60s or early 70s) sits across from me and says something like:  "Matt, I'm house rich and cash poor. I don't want to sell, but I need money." It's one of the most common financial tensions facing Canadian retirees right now. Years of rising home values across the Fraser Valley have left a lot o

By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt Something is shifting in how Fraser Valley families think about home ownership, and if you pay close attention to what's happening in Chilliwack right now, you can see it playing out in real time. More families are buying together. Not beside each other, not in the same neighbourhood together. On the same property. Under the same roof, or at least on the same lot. Grandparents moving in with their adult children. Adult children who can't aff

So it’s time to downsize, but the options seem overwhelming… You’ve raised the kids in this house. You know every creak in the floorboards and exactly which burner on the stove runs hot. The backyard has hosted a thousand barbecues, and the garage......well, it hasn’t fit a car in years. But now the kids have moved on, the stairs feel a little steeper than they used to, and you’re spending your weekends maintaining a property that’s become more burden than blessing. If that s

When you need to sell your house quickly, you're not just competing with other listings, you're racing against time. Whether you're dealing with a job relocation, financial pressure, divorce, or simply want to move on to your next chapter, I've helped many homeowners navigate fast sales without leaving money on the table. After years of handling complex transactions throughout the Fraser Valley, I've learned that speed and profit don't have to be mutually exclusive. Here are

Bank of Canada Holds Prime Rate at 2.25% - What This Means for Your Mortgage By Matt - The Welcome Matt | January 28, 2026 Today, the Bank of Canada announced they're holding the prime rate steady at 2.25%. If you're shopping for a mortgage in the Fraser Valley or already have one, you might be wondering: "Does this affect me?" The answer depends entirely on which type of mortgage you have—and understanding the difference could save you thousands of dollars. Let me break this