How much would you have to save to deal with a mortgage lender that had no in-person or telephone advisors, just ultra-low rates, live chat support and a reliable, efficient user experience? If you’re like 16% of mortgage shoppers, you wouldn’t deal with that kind of lender at all. If you’re like 18% of mortgage shoppers, you’d happily use an...

The 2020s won’t be the decade to lock into a long-term fixed mortgage, not if you believe RBC Economics. It’s projecting just 1.7% annual economic growth for the next 10 years, give or take. That’s roughly a full point less than before the Great Recession. At 1.7% GDP, there’s generally very little reason for rate hikes. Quite the opposite, RBC...

Here’s reason #5,369 why we don’t like to predict interest rates: war. Canada woke up this morning to the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force being incinerated by a U.S. bomb. Iran’s Supreme Leader promised “severe retaliation” — whatever that means — and just like that, bond yields plunged. It was completely unpredictable. When global risk escalates, traders instinctively...

motusbank and Tangerine have been putting the screws to HELOC competitors for months now. Their respective 3.75% and 3.85% HELOC rates have undercut almost every lender in Canada since last spring. That’s far longer than other lenders ever expected (or hoped). The more that consumers learn about these rates, the more it becomes an issue for the major banks. Reason being, HELOCs are usually...

Rates are breaking out. Canada’s widely watched 5-year bond yield just hit a seven-month high. That’s typically bullish for fixed mortgage rates. Trendsetter RBC wasted no time this morning. It ran a press release announcing it was boosting 3-, 4- and 5-year fixed rates by 10, 20 and 20 bps, respectively. RBC doesn’t usually issue press releases when it’s merely...

Canadian government bond yields, which lead fixed mortgage rates, are essentially adrift at sea. They, like so many other global yields, seem to just be biding time until positive (or negative) trade news breaks out of Washington. There’s so much uncertainty out there that it makes even less sense than usual to try and time the market. When President Trump...

Where did all the first-time buyers go? New data from CMHC suggests there are noticeably fewer of them out there (stats below). Maybe they’re hibernating until they can save up a bigger down payment, amid home prices that (in many regions) remain near record highs. Or, perhaps fewer of them are able to pass the mortgage stress test given today’s...

More people are researching mortgages online before they confront a lender or broker. That’s the good news. The bad news is that less than 1 in 3 are using sites like this to research mortgage rates, if CMHC’s latest data is accurate. The percentage that do use rate sites is up materially from last year’s 22%, but still too many...

If you knew where inflation was headed, you’d have a great chance of knowing where mortgage rates were headed. The latter rises and falls with the former. That’s why so many people try to predict inflation. Among the many who think they know where it’s going: The 100 senior Canadian businesspeople surveyed by the Bank of Canada every quarter 2...

When Scotiabank launched its eHOME Mortgage in March, it promised a faster, easier way to get a big-bank mortgage, with compelling rates to boot. Since then, industry-types have watched and wondered if eHOME would get much traction. It has. “When we built Scotiabank eHOME, we set out to create a unique mortgage experience for our customers, focused on simplicity, security, transparency...