The Home of the Week is a 19th-century stone cottage straight out of a painting.Joe Scully/showyourlisting.com
This week: Flood risks have driven up home insurance rates by 20 per cent in these cities, and a guide to living with your adult children who can’t afford to move out. Plus, a surprising mortgage trend and one property worth a look.
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At a premium
Flood risk is driving some Ontario home insurance prices up by more than 20%
Rising mortgage rates and property taxes already have many homeowners feeling underwater, and now they can blame flood risks for driving another cost up. The average home insurance quote has risen by more than 20 per cent since 2024 in many parts of the GTA and Southern Ontario, according to a joint study by insurance technology company MyChoice and digital brokerage Wahi. Average annual fees have risen by 26 per cent to $1,290 in Ajax, the city with the highest flood risk in the study, and Markham and Brockville rose by 22 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively.
Insurance rates have been rising rapidly as providers respond to increasingly common major weather events due to climate change, and as labour shortages, high gas prices and tariffs make it more expensive to build, Salmaan Farooqui reports. But that means that many homeowners are spending more of their monthly income to insure their homes, and the allure of lower home prices for potential buyers is being offset – in part – by higher premiums. Read the full story here.
Analysis
How Canada’s big banks turned mortgages into a nearly risk-free cash machine
Ontario and B.C.’s softening real estate markets have raised concerns of painful mortgage losses at Canada’s big banks for years. But as Hanif Bayat writes, the data show their mortgage portfolios have been remarkably resilient.
The Big Six wrote off just $38-million from a combined mortgage portfolio of $1.76-trillion between Nov. 1, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026, according to data aggregated by WOWA Data Labs. Total mortgage write-offs over the past four quarters were $168-million, an astonishingly low 0.01 per cent of total mortgage holdings.
One key factor is that defaults remain low across the board thanks to Canada’s strong regulatory framework, according to Hanif. The mortgage stress test builds in a buffer, and knowing that lenders can go after other assets means Canadians go to great lengths to avoid defaulting on their mortgages. Read his full analysis behind the numbers here.
This week’s lowest fixed and variable mortgage rates in Canada
Rates shown are the lowest available for each term/type and category (insured vs. uninsured) as of market close on Thursday, April 23.
Full house
How to (happily) live with your grown children as more young adults move back or stay home
Whether your kids are moving back home or never left, here are some expert tips to make the arrangement as smooth as possible.Illustration by Salini Perera
If you were expecting to become an empty nester before you realized your grown children can’t afford to move out, this one is for you. Adult kids are living with their parents out of financial necessity – not cultural norms or expectations – more than in decades past. In 2021, 57 per cent of 20- to 24-year-olds and 47.5 per cent of postsecondary students aged 20 to 34 lived with their parents, according to Statistics Canada.
However, as Diana Ballon learned first-hand, this new reality can create challenges in even the closest of families. She was genuinely excited for more mother-daughter time when her 22 year old moved back home after university, but Diana didn’t anticipate her meal-planning getting more complicated or lying awake at night worrying if her daughter was out late. Parents like her may “miss being empty nesters, with fewer meals to prepare, less to clean and the peace and quiet of a more independent home life,” she wrote.
So whether your kids are moving back soon or they’ve never left, here’s a guide for how to live with your grown children as happily as possible. From defining chore expectations to deciding whether to charge rent and protecting your relationships, experts say there are many ways to ease the friction. Since making some changes, including her daughter preparing one dinner per week, Diana says it’s become “a win-win situation where we are enjoying the benefits of our daughter’s companionship, while also carving out alone time.”
Read the full guide here and find design ideas to ease co-habitation here. Plus, young adults share why they live at home and how they make it work with their families.
Design corner
Double-height ceilings are making a comeback, but should they?
As the name implies, double-height ceilings are twice as high as standard ceilings, creating a sense of grandeur in a room.West Coast Modern/Supplied
They’re big, they’re exaggerated and they’re straight out of the 1980s. Double-height ceilings are on the rise again, and can make even the smallest rooms feel spacious or larger spots seem palatial. But design and real estate experts are divided on whether they’re high style or simply excessive.
From creating a sense of grandeur and brightening up a space to potential impacts on resale value and heating costs, here are some things to consider before going all-in on a double-height ceiling.
Home of the Week
‘Every child’s drawing of a house’ near Georgian Bay
The Home of the Week features a great room that looks out at the pool and 'magical' surrounding landscape.Joe Scully/showyourlisting.com
370474 B Concession, Meaford, Ont. – Full gallery here
This Gothic revival stone cottage in Grey County is a weekend retreat straight out of a painting. Katharine Lochnan, senior curator emerita at the Art Gallery of Ontario, said she and her late husband, architect George Yost, were enamoured by the circa-1876 farmhouse before it was even on the market. The exterior is made from granite boulders and fossilized limestone from the Niagara escarpment, creating a medley of pink, ochre, black, white and grey stone amid the rolling hills. With a steep gable and pointed arch window, “it was every child’s drawing of a house,” Lochnan said.
But you don’t need to be artistically inclined to appreciate the cottage, which the couple spent three decades restoring in a Victorian style with Georgian details. A board-and-batten addition designed by Yost created a new kitchen backing the old home’s stone, a great room overlooking the pool, a dining room and a library, and the three-bedroom, three-bathroom house now totals 2,500 square feet of living space. The best part? An in-ground swimming pool sheltered by towering trees, including a maple that is more than 200 years old. “There’s something magical about the landscape up here,” Lochnan said. “It’s like being in a living art gallery.”
Guess the price
c. The asking price is $1,895,000.