—The Mortgage Report: Sept. 18— Variable Discounts Improve Further Bankers are making more dinero on floating-rate loans. That’s motivating them to cough up some profit and sharpen their variable rate pencils. Online brokers are now effectively as low as prime – 0.93% on default-insured variables in some provinces. Uninsured customers (including those refinancing) get milked for more, as usual, but...
A Two-Month High for the 5-year Yield Canada’s #1 fixed mortgage rate indicator, the 5-year bond yield, has stubbornly refused to challenge its March record low. And now it has turned upwards, closing Thursday at the highest level in two months: 0.44%. Concerns over inflation and massive government debt issuance are two key reasons. A close above 0.55% could indicate...
—The Mortgage Report: Aug. 5— Is This a Joke?: “The CMHC defines housing as affordable when ‘it costs less than 30% of a household’s before-tax income,’ which includes rent or mortgage (principal and interest) payments, property taxes and other home bills,” reports the Financial Post. The punchline is, you have to move to a remote fishing village in Newfoundland to...
—The Mortgage Report: Saturday Edition— The Readvanceable Shuffle: Got a fixed rate above 3% in a readvanceable mortgage? Does your lender let you lock in the HELOC portion to a low-cost short-term fixed rate? If so, here’s a tip that might save you some interest. Jargon Buster: A “readvanceable mortgage” is one that has a regular amortizing mortgage linked to...
—The Mortgage Report: July 8— Avoiding the Cliff: If six-month payment deferrals end as planned in September, tens of thousands of homeowners will default on their mortgages—no question about it. CMHC calls this the looming “deferral cliff,” and analysts want to know what the government will do about it. If Australia is any guide, deferrals could very well be extended....
—The Mortgage Report: June 25— OSFI Unplugged: Alberta MP Tom Kmiec has obtained internal emails from OSFI that chronicle the regulator’s efforts to improve the mortgage stress test—in particular its efforts to “fix” the minimum qualifying rate (a.k.a., “MQR” or benchmark rate). The emails show that OSFI’s PR staff wanted the public to know it was making “efforts to get...
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...
5:56 p.m. Update Payment Worries: 1 in 3 Canadians fear they’ll miss a rent or mortgage payment (Survey.) If you’re one of them, here’s an updated list of lender links for payment deferral info. Appraisal Stop-gap: More lenders are announcing that they will accept “Modified Full Appraisals.” That’s where appraisers do virtual inspections of the property with the homeowner’s help,...
For years you’ve been able to apply for a big-bank mortgage on the internet. But you’ve never been able to complete the entire approval—including choosing a good rate—100% online. That changed in 2019. TD and Scotiabank became leaders by launching digital mortgage applications where consumers could process almost the entire mortgage online—by themselves—including choosing a discounted rate. And that rate...
TD has become the first Big 6 bank to lower its posted 5-year fixed rate since July 2019. The move comes amid plunging bond yields and just 11 days after the banking regulator (OSFI) essentiallyblamed banks for keeping posted rates too high. By doing so, banks haveinflated the federal mortgage qualifying rate, makingit unnecessarily difficult for borrowers to pass the...
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