For homeowners who need cash but either can’t charm a lender or don't want payments, there are options. But few consider this particular option: the Home Equity Sharing Agreement (HESA).

Home Equity Partners (HEQ) is one of a handful of purveyors of HESAs in Canada. We caught up with its CEO and founder, Shael Weinreb, to pin down who they make sense for, and who should run in the other direction.

Weinreb's Inspiration

"HESAs are one of the first non-debt investment-type products for Canadians to access equity in their homes,” Weinreb explains. His inspiration for starting this business was a major bank, the one that denied his 80-year-old, retired father a 10% LTV HELOC on a $2 million home.

"My father desperately needed the money at the time," Weinreb recalls. "He was declined despite being a loyal customer at the bank for 40 years. It put a lot of strain on our family."

So Weinreb decided to launch a product his dad could have qualified for at the time, the HESA.

What's a HESA?

Just as traders were getting cozy with the idea of Fed cuts, along comes a wicked curveball.

On Thursday, it was U.S. PPI, which detonated the biggest blowout (forecast overshoot) in years.

The Bank of Canada kicked the tires on a 25-bp cut last month but deferred it, hinting they’ll only ease if underlying inflation stops acting so spicy.

For mortgage shoppers, that and a nickel still buys a nickel — nothing our readers didn't already know. The Bank is still waiting for a clearer pile of data to push it off the fence, one way or another.

Bond investors feared that U.S. inflation would land hotter than expected on Tuesday. It did make some noise (more on that), but not enough to convince traders the Fed won't cut in September.

For the crew at the BoC, Canadian inflation is always paramount. U.S. CPI plays second fiddle, but with its 0.82 correlation to Canadian CPI since 1991, America's bearing on Canadian price levels is undeniable.

That's why today's acceleration in U.S. core inflation feels a bit unerving, kinda like finding out your “quiet” neighbour is hoarding fireworks.

With Monday’s economic calendar offering all the excitement of an unplugged slot machine—and U.S. CPI incoming—yields chose not to commit one way or another.

After Friday's letdown on employment, the 5-year yield's 2 bps dip felt like a shrug.

Looking ahead to this week, Canadian economic data is sparse. That means the next five days should see our rates marching to the beat of whatever tune the U.S. and global markets decide to play.

Interviews sans fluff. That's the mantra around here, and MLN’s debut of Stress Test This aims to deliver just that. It’s a tight 9-minute format designed to load up on insight before attention spans start checking the clock.

Episode #1 spotlights the entrepreneur who took modern retail, fused it with mortgage brokering and then scaled it to a $4+ billion business. He then trailblazed the broker-owned lender concept, became a digital marketing authority (seemingly overnight), and built what many would call Canada’s most formidable independent broker brand.

This describes none other than True North Mortgage Founder Dan Eisner—a man who treats mortgage business strategy like some people treat chess: three moves ahead, and never by accident.