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VANCOUVER -- The province announced the "first steps" of its plan to address B.C.'s rising strata insurance rates Tuesday morning.

The changes are meant to bring transparency to the industry, close loopholes surrounding depreciation reports and help strata owners and corporations more information when it comes to making decisions, the province says.

Rising strata insurance rates are a major financial pressure during what is an already challenging time, Finance Minister Carole James said.

"This is an extremely complex issue playing out in the private insurance industry, but that doesn't lessen our government's commitment to doing what we can to make the situation better," James said.

She said the province first became aware of "significant shifts" in insurance premiums late last year, that went "well beyond...

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Experts in the real estate industry say CMHC’s new, strict lending measures will trigger a surge in home purchase volume as potential home buyers rush to the mortgage market before July 1, when these policies take effect.

“Whenever there has been a deadline given for a major mortgage rule change,” Ron Butler, mortgage broker at Butler Mortgage, told Yahoo Finance Canada “there has been a distinctly accelerated pace of transactions prior to that change.” Butler described that this has been the case with any rule change that was not immediately invoked.

CMHC’s new measures, which include at least one applicant having a minimum credit score of 680 and a maximum debt service ratio of 44 and gross debt service ratio of 35, mean that prospective home buyers who don’t meet the new requirements have a tight deadline to meet.

It’s an issue that resonates with Jivan Sanghera, mortgage broker at Circle Mortgage Group. Sanghera described a family...

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