Ontario Mortgage Rates: March 2022

March 2022 -- Canadian Mortgage & Housing Market Snapshot

1) Bank of Canada rate decisions - Date: March 2, 2022 - Decision: Rate hike - Overnight rate: 0.25% → 0.50% - Change: +25 basis points - Rationale: The Bank said the Canadian economy was operating close to capacity, inflation was well above target, and the extraordinary monetary stimulus put in place during the pandemic was no longer needed. This was the first BoC rate hike of the tightening cycle. - Important context: March 2022 was a major turning point -- the market moved from “anticipating hikes” to actually entering the tightening cycle.

2) Mortgage rate snapshot -- March 2022 The broad March 2022 mortgage-rate picture was:

• Prime rate: moved up from about 2.45% to around 2.70% after the March 2 BoC hike
• Variable rates:
• rose with prime
• generally moved into the mid-2% range, depending on lender discounts
• 5-year fixed:
• generally in the upper-2% to mid-3% range
• fixed rates had already been moving up ahead of the BoC hike because of rising bond yields
• Practical takeaway:
• March 2022 was the month borrowers started to feel the shift
• variable rates were no longer anchored at the cycle lows
• fixed rates were already repricing more aggressively

Caveat: I did not find a single authoritative national source giving one exact Canada-wide “average 5-year fixed” and “average variable” for March 2022 only, so these remain approximate market ranges.

Canada (national) Month-specific reporting for March 2022 showed the market starting to cool from the earlier peak: - National home sales: down 5.4% month-over-month from February - National average sale price: about $796,068 - up about 11.2% year-over-year - Months of inventory: around 1.7 months - Interpretation: - the market remained extremely tight - but activity was beginning to cool as rates rose and affordability worsened

GTA / Ontario proxy For TRREB / GTA March 2022: - Sales: 10,955 - Year-over-year sales change: -30.5% - Average selling price: $1,299,894 - up 18.5% year-over-year - New listings: 20,038 - down 11.1% year-over-year - Interpretation: - GTA sales were down sharply from March 2021’s extreme peak - but prices remained very high, with average values around $1.3 million - the market was still tight, though no longer at the same frenzy as a year earlier

Ontario-wide I did not find a clean primary Ontario-wide March 2022 housing dataset in this run that I’m comfortable quoting directly. The strongest Ontario-specific evidence here remains TRREB / GTA.

Major policy development - March 2, 2022: BoC begins its hiking cycle with a 25 bp increase - This was the key mortgage-policy development of the month because it: - directly increased borrowing costs - reset expectations for future mortgage pricing - affected variable-rate borrowers immediately or near-immediately as lender prime rates changed ### OSFI / FSRA / federal - I did not verify a separate major OSFI, FSRA, or federal mortgage-rule shock that landed specifically in March 2022 and rivaled the importance of the BoC hike - So the dominant policy story was the start of tightening

5) Private / alternative lending -- March 2022 I did not find a clean Ontario-only private-lending data release for March 2022 in this run.

Best month-specific characterization - rising rates and worsening affordability likely increased reliance on: - alternative lenders - private lending - co-borrower / restructuring approaches for some borrowers - But I do not have a clean March-only Ontario metric to quote directly - The dominant story was: - mainstream market cooling under higher rates - not a single private-lending shock headline ## 6) Notable events -- March 2022

Major headlines - March 2: first BoC rate hike of the cycle - Prime rate increases - affecting variable-rate borrowers - Housing market starts to cool - sales down month-over-month nationally - GTA sales well below March 2021’s peak - Prices still extremely high - national average near $796,000 - GTA average near $1.3 million

Fraud / court / lender events - I did not find a single clearly dominant mortgage fraud case, lender collapse, or court ruling that I could confidently verify as a defining March 2022 mortgage headline in this run

Bottom line for March 2022 - BoC: hiked from 0.25% to 0.50% on March 2 - Mortgage rates: variable rates moved up with prime; fixed rates were already moving materially higher - Housing market: still expensive and tight, but beginning to cool - Canada: average price about $796,068 - GTA: 10,955 sales, average price $1,299,894 - Policy: the key March development was the first BoC rate hike of the cycle - Alternative lending: still relevant at the margin, but no clean March-only Ontario figure verified ## Sources - Bank of Canada -- March 2, 2022 decision - CREA March 2022 release title / month-specific market reporting - TRREB market-watch references / March 2022 figures surfaced in search results - Secondary coverage summarizing March 2022 GTA data: - - - Rate references - - -

Caveats - You asked for March 2022 only, so I kept this month-specific. - I could verify the BoC March 2 rate hike strongly from the primary source. - I relied on month-specific market reporting and search-result evidence for national and GTA figures; I did not directly extract a clean primary Ontario-wide dataset in this run. - I also did not** find a single authoritative national “average 5-year fixed / average variable” series for March 2022 only, so the mortgage-rate section remains an approximate market snapshot rather than a precise official average.