Were TD’s bombshell new HELOC rules inspired by the government’s master plan? You be the judge. Our take: HELOC rule changes are about more than just stopping speculators from funding secondary properties. And TD’s move is just a precursor. Regulators won’t come right out and say it, but people we talk to are certain that OSFI and the Department of Finance...

Home equity line of credit (HELOC) balances are growing more than twice as fast as mortgages, shows a new report by CMHC. That will certainly raise more eyebrows in Ottawa. The government has been closely surveilling HELOC risk for a few years now. Their concern: homeowners are relying too much on HELOCs, taking on debt that’ll slow their consumption in the future...

One in four borrowers will renew their mortgage this year, estimates the Bank of Canada. Some of them are about to find renewing a whole lot trickier and potentially more expensive — thanks to two important rule changes: #1.  The Much-Publicized Stress Test As most of you now know, on January 1 the government (OSFI) made it harder to get...

Big news here for people wanting to switch lenders with a mortgage that was previously refinanced. Until recently, it hasn’t been possible to move your mortgage to a new lender and get ultra-low default insured rates if you had previously refinanced that mortgage. That was due to an interpretation of the insurance rules implemented by the Department of Finance in 2016....

New data has more than a few observers second guessing Ottawa’s latest mortgage clampdown. RE/MAX’s 2018 Spring Market Trends Report quantifies the by-products coming from one of the biggest mortgage rule changes ever, the uninsured mortgage stress test. The data beg the question, are the side effects worse than the government’s medicine? More Buyers Are Being Hamstrung One in four...

The most extraordinary thing about Canadian real estate is how it has shrugged off rule change after rule change in the mortgage market. We’ve seen governments impose over 60 housing finance restrictions since 2008, the height of the global credit crisis. These policies shrank the number of qualified borrowers and inflated mortgage costs. And yet, far from collapse, the market is...

With the spring market on deck and bond yields sliding, big banks are sharpening their pencils on 5-year fixed pricing. Today we saw BMO cut its “Smart” 5-year fixed rate by 20 basis points, from 3.49% to 3.29%. (Best BMO mortgage rates) Then we saw CIBC launch a new 3.19% 5-year for high-ratio mortgages only. (Best CIBC mortgage rates) That...

HELOC balances appear to be surging at their fastest pace in five years—even faster than mortgages, reports Bloomberg. That’s got ever-vigilant regulators raising an eyebrow. And it’s got certain lenders we talk to expecting HELOCs to be the next area of mortgage rule tightening. Under the Microscope Currently, 2 in 5 secured residential loans in this country (roughly 3 million)...

If you like low mortgage rates, there was good news from Canada’s housing agency Wednesday. CMHC CEO Evan Siddall said a proposal to have lenders potentially share losses when insured borrowers default is now on the back burner. This Department of Finance scheme was sold as a way to encourage more prudence in lender underwriting. But it also threatened to...

Big-city home values were out of control. The real estate market needed de-risking. But the solution policy-makers gave us (the B-20 mortgage guideline) was imperfect, very imperfect. What’s About to Happen Effective January 1, 2018, the banking regulator (OSFI) will force the vast majority of low-ratio mortgage applicants to prove they can afford a payment based on a rate that’s...