Busy day? Here are five stories popular with Globe readers to help you catch up.
Toronto, Vancouver condo owners look to list over next 5 years
A growing number of condo investors in Canada’s biggest housing markets are planning to list their units over the next five years. They’re banking on the profits from rising prices to cash out, Tamsin McMahon reports.
A new survey of nearly 42,000 local condo owners in Toronto and Vancouver by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation found that 52.6 per cent of investors were planning to hold their units for at least five years, down from 58.4 per cent last year.
The shift comes as more investors expect prices to rise, with nearly 55 per cent telling CMHC they expected their unit to increase in value this year, up from 48 per cent last year.
Home prices in both Toronto and Vancouver have risen 8 per cent for the year.
But while much of the frenzy is for single-family homes, condos have not been immune: Condo prices have risen 4.4 per cent over the past year in the Greater Vancouver Area and 3.6 per cent in the Toronto region.
CMHC expects prices to continue to rise this year and into next year.
The end of three-year cellphone contracts: what you need to know
A June deadline that will finally spell the end of three-year cellphone contracts is looming for Canada’s wireless industry.
Christine Dobby sums up what it means for you:
If you are on a two-year agreement, your contract will not be affected.
But if you still have a three-year cellphone plan, you could be affected in one of two ways:
- If you signed a three-year agreement before June 3, 2013, you will not have to pay any device subsidy balance remaining on your contract and cannot be charged a fee for cancelling your contract.
- If you signed a three-year contract after June 3, 2013, but before Dec. 2, 2013, you will soon be able to walk away from your contract without a cancellation fee, but you must wait until at least two years have passed since you signed the agreement.
Some cellphone carriers still offered three-year contracts for a few months after the code was announced. If you signed a three-year agreement in August, 2013, for example, you will be able to cancel on the two-year anniversary date this August without being charged the remaining device subsidy.
The downside? Some plans have become more expensive as the carriers said they had to increase the monthly prices to recoup the device subsidy over a shorter period of time.
How my four-year-old showed me the dangers of being polite
I was raised to always be polite and speak up if something was bothering me; to be confident, but to ignore some things that bothered me, for the sake of being cordial, Christina Vardanis writes.
Everyday sexism fell neatly into this category.
But I realized that my attitude – passive acceptance, masked as confidence – had trickled down to what I was teaching my daughter.
So one night, I changed my script from, “If someone hits you, you should say stop, and if they don’t, just walk away” to: “If someone hits you, say stop and if they don’t, tell the teacher.”
The takeaway: Speak up. Screw polite. Kick up a damn fuss.
A friend’s jaw dropped recently when my half-pint squared herself in front of her six-year-old son and forcefully told him to let her speak. (Unprompted, he apologized and asked what she wanted to say.)
While it’s much too early to tell if this is really a watershed moment culturally, on a micro level, I can report that it’s changed how one kid is being raised.
Which travel rewards program is best for your future vacation needs?
Now’s the time to start planning your 2016 summer vacation.
And you’ll do yourself a favour by picking the right credit card travel rewards program now and using it for the next 12 months to rack up points, Rob Carrick writes.
The question: Do you want a card that gets you reward flights, or one that offers generic points you can use for any travel at all?
Reward flights:
These cards are an efficient way of converting the spending you do on your card into reward flights. In real life, there can be problems like these:
- There are no available reward flights for the trip you want to take, or reward flights are available only if you use many additional points.
- Your reward plan prices flights at the regular rate and won’t let you take advantage of seat sales by using fewer points.
- Taxes, fees and surcharges apply and must either be paid in cash or by burning up additional points.
Generic travel points:
They have their drawbacks if you want business class seats, but they more than make up for it with the flexibility they offer: Generic travel rewards are kind of like cash-back that you use for any travel-related expense – flights, car rentals, train tickets, hotels and more.
Toronto-Dominion Bank even allowed points on the card to be used for kennelling cats while on vacation.
Are we over the size-zero model?
A new study argues that it’s a good idea for brands to ditch the skinny models and portray real women.
Researchers examined young women’s perceptions of different-sized models in fashion ads, Susan Krashinsky reports.
They found that average-sized models were rated roughly as attractive as the conventional “size-zero” models. And in some cases, they were rated more attractive.
That is potentially an important message for marketers, who may lean on extremely thin body types in advertising out of a desire to portray their products in the most attractive light.
In the study, those with low self-esteem rated the average-sized model much more favourably.
But even among women with high self-esteem, who are less negatively affected, average-sized models were rated just as appealing as zero-sized models.
That was less apparent for established brands like Gucci that have cultivated a certain image, but the difference was stark with new brands – suggesting that advertisers looking to build a new relationship with consumers may want to rethink their standards.
Follow Kat Sieniuc on Twitter: @katsieniuc