The Mortgage Report – May 16 Now to 4.94%: Scotiabank trimmed its posted 5-year fixed rate to 4.94% on Saturday. That puts the mode average of the Big 6 Banks’ 5-year posted rates—and hence the minimum stress test rate—at 4.94%. Of note: This is the lowest the stress test rate has been since October 2017 The all-time low was 4.64%,...
Mortgage Report – May 14 De-Stressing: Call out the marching band, BMO’s posted 5-year rate cut today should ease the government’s mortgage “stress test,” effective next week. As it stands, the minimum stress test rate will likely fall from today’s 5.04% to 4.99%. It’ll mark the first time since January 2018 (when OSFI’s stress test began) that this benchmark rate...
A fourth major bank has cut its posted 5-year fixed rate today. This time it’s BMO. The move comes four long months afterthe 100+ basis-point collapse in 5-year bond yields. Such a delay in reducing posted rates after large, market-wide rate drops is unusual historically speaking, as we’veexplainedpreviously. See the chart below for more perspective. BMO’s cut today has implications...
It turns out TD Canada Trust’s “market-moving rate cut” won’t be so market moving, at least not yet. On Sunday, TD slashed a number of fixed rates on its website. Today it un-slashed them, saying: “Changes to our posted rates on our website were made in error. We apologize for any misunderstanding and please refer to the rates currently posted.”—TD...
Fixed mortgage rates are rising all around us. The latest players to move areRBC, BMO and NBC. Each of them hiked fixed rates this morning.(The latest bank mortgage rates.) What they didn’t raise was the 5-year posted rate. That matters because big bank posted rates are used to qualify roughly 9 out of 10 mortgage borrowers in this country. They...
“RBC’s affordability measure hasn’t been this bad since 1990.”—RBC Economics That’s according to RBC’s “Housing Trends and Affordability” report, which is making headlines across the country as we speak. But if you’re house hunting and terrified you won’t get a mortgage, don’t soil your trousers just yet. There’s a devil in RBC’s details. It’s the mortgage rates they assume in...
Confusion and angst. That’s what TD caused with its 45-basis-point 5-year posted rate hike on Friday. But as it turns out, no other banks matched it, at least not yet. Unless you’re a TD customer,the bank’s gambit should have limited ill effects. Status Quo with the Stress Test TD’s monster move had no impact on themortgage qualifying rate(MQR) this week,...
We’re seeinggovernment bond yields approaching seven-year highs, and now this. TD has just boosted its posted 5-year fixed a whopping 45 basis points (bps) to 5.59%. Over the last decade, the average increase to posted 5-year fixed rates has been24 bps. A 45-bps bump is rare, and the most in eight years. If at least two other Big 6 banks...
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