About Alain Savard

Born and raised in Quebec City, I left home at 17 to join "Le Collège Militaire Royal" in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, 30 minutes south of Montreal. In 1989, I graduated from The Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario with a Mechanical Engineering degree and an Officer's Commission in the Canadian Navy. My naval training brought me to Halifax in 1990; and I liked the city so much that I made it home.

Although truly an engineer at heart, neither a military nor an engineering career was ever quite right for me because I am first and foremost a loner who likes to do things my own way. So in 1993, while I still could -- since I was only 25 and had yet to start a family -- I decided to give up on the two professions to join the industry full-time.

Because I had started buying rental properties in 1990, getting licensed to improve my skills at the bargaining table was an option worth considering. Some members of my family were less than thrilled to see me give up on everything to go into real estate. But in the end, I followed my instinct and took the plunge knowing that I could always fall back on my engineering degree if this gamble didn't work out. I tried several different things during my first three years in the industry including opening my own firm and teaching live home-buying seminars. But it wasn't until 1995 that I finally found my calling: no more buying and renting houses for me, I was going to become an exclusive buyer agent. 

I forget how it all happened, but clearly remember being blown away when I first heard of a new kind of real estate companies that was emerging in the United States -- firms whose mandate it was to negotiate the price of houses down for buyers. This was so perfect for me that within a year, I converted my company and became one of them. It was December 1996, and as far as I know, my firm was the first buyers-only brokerage in Canada.

I spent the next several years teaching seminars and coaching home buyers. But in 2007, I realized that although companies like mine had by then spread to all 50 states south of the border, the same had not happened here. For some unknown reason, my firm was still the only one of its kind in the country. And this is when the idea for the Buying-a-Home-in-Canada website was born. Clearly something had to be done. And since I had already spent years teaching the purchasers in my area the difference between buying a house and being sold one, I felt comfortable in my abilities to deliver the message to a national audience.

So off to work I went. I kept coaching, but stopped teaching seminars and advertising my services to free up time that I used to write the manual. My goal was to create a manuscript that all people could understand even if they were totally new to real estate. It took me 4 years to finally produce a first offering with which I was happy. I know that things are still far from perfect, but believe that they are now good enough to finally make everything public. This site is for you; and I hope you will enjoy learning about the art of buying and selling a house.

Good luck to you all!

Alain Savard

Mortgage Rates

Discounted rates found on the internet on April 26, 2024.

Fixed-Rate Mortgages

1-year closed: 6.63% (6.63%)
2-year closed: 5.94% (5.64%)
3-year closed: 5.31% (5.31%)
5-year closed: 4.84% (4.84%)
7-year closed: 5.74% (5.74%)
10-yr closed:   5.84% (5.84%)

Variable-Rate Mortgages

BofC’s Rate:   5.00% (5.00%)
Banks' Prime:    7.20% (7.20%)
5-year: Prime - 1.30% or 5.90%

Some rates may require CMHC insurance coverage. BofC stands for Bank of Canada. The rates in brackets are from April 19, 2024.