What You Should Know About Collateral Charge Mortgages I recently had clients who were refinancing their mortgage completely reject a very attractive offering from one of the big chartered banks. Their reasoning? All of this bank’s mortgages are registered as collateral charges, and all of their online research into this topic spooked them completely. Over […]

MORTGAGES ARE LIKE COFFEE The most common question we get for mortgages is “what is your best rate?” Now imagine we walked into our local coffee shop and asked “what is your best price?” Doesn’t happen. There are all kinds of different coffees and lots of ways to make them. The same goes for mortgages. […]

HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON A VARIABLE RATE MORTGAGE A few years ago, I remember seeing a statistic that said that if you took out a variable rate mortgage instead of a fixed rate, you would do better in 95 out of the last 100 years. Often the spread between a 5-year variable rate and […]

CREDIT REPORTS: YOU’VE SCORED! BUT ARE YOU PLAYING THE GAME? For most people, your personal credit score and how a credit score is calculated are complete mysteries. How can you be expected to play and be successful if you aren’t even told the rules of the game? There are things borrowers can do to improve […]

4 WEIRD THINGS LENDERS ASK FOR A number of times I have had people who wonder why they need to provide so much documentation when it comes to arranging a mortgage. Besides an employment letter, you are usually asked to provide a pay stub and your most recent Notice of Assessment (NOA) to prove income. […]

Parents to the Rescue for Young Homebuyers Following a huge run-up in prices over the last several years, housing has become very expensive in many of the country’s key markets. Just ask the 24% of Canadian parents who say they’ve had to help their children over the age of 18 buy a home. And when […]

BULLYING ENDS HERE UPDATE FOR JULY 2019 ‘Well that’s it for another school year….and what a year it was! I am full of joy writing this to you, and a little overwhelmed as well realizing just how effective our charity has become. Once again, we presented in EVERY province across Canada while also going to […]

STOP THE AGEIST STEREOTYPE As a society, we are continually evolving in our acceptance of past stigmas. But while we are evolving, why is ageism still so prominent and accepted. And what can we do to shine a light on this issue? Overrepresentation of an underrepresented cohort A recent research study with Brainsights reveals that many of […]

Latest in Mortgage News: Stress-Test Rate Drops After a Year of No Change The benchmark posted 5-year fixed rate, which is used for stress-testing Canadian mortgages, fell yesterday in its first move since May 2018. The Bank of Canada announced the mortgage qualifying rate drop to 5.19% from 5.34%. This marks the first reduction in the rate […]

QUALIFYING MORTGAGE RATE FALLS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE B-20 INTRO The interest rate used by the federally regulated banks in mortgage stress tests has declined for the first time since 2016, making it a bit easier to get a mortgage. This is particularly important for first-time homeowners who have been struggling to pass the B-20 […]