The Mortgage Report: April 5 Many modest-income Canadians who have never owned a home may never own a home, at least not an average home. That is, unless they can live almost anywhere (work remotely, for example), and/or they’re buying with someone else (e.g., a significant other). Here’s why… First-time homebuyers now expect to pay $433,000 on average, according to...
—The Mortgage Report: Nov. 27— If you’re out there mortgage shopping, BoC chief Tiff Macklem had a message for you Thursday: “We want to be very clear, Canadians can be confident that borrowing costs are going to remain very low for a long time.” It’s a mantra he’s repeated for months. Among the reasons: “…The economy still has more than...
—The Mortgage Report: Oct. 23— It seems HSBC Canada may start selling through mortgage brokers once again. The bank had a “Head of Mortgage Broker Channel” job posting on its website until this morning. We then confirmed with a separate reliable source that the news appears to be true. HSBC was not able to comment by press time. The move...
Grandfathering Remains in Effect Okay, you really shouldn’t be as happy as these people if you have to do an end-around to pass the stress test, but nonetheless… If you’re switching lenders to get a better deal, the best 5-year mortgage rates are usually available only on insured or insurable mortgages. And that’s a problem if your property value has...
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...
It’s a fact; little better than 1 in 4 Canadians have any idea what amortization means, according to a recently-released Ipsos survey. Surprisingly, “…Less than 1% of respondents gave a strictly correctresponse by saying only that it means “the time to pay the mortgage in full,'” Ipsos wrote in its report. Just as eye-opening, 14% of people claimed to have...
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...
Love it or hate it, Canada’s controversial mortgage stress test has led to one welcome benefit: bigger mortgage discounts. That’s due partly to slowing demand for B-20-compliant mortgages—i.e., mortgages that require borrowers to pass the banking regulator’s “stress test,” which was adopted in January. In its latest Senior Loan Officer survey, the Bank of Canada writes, “Mortgage approval rates continued...
Rising rates and new mortgage regulations aren’t enough to scare nearly 1 in 4 Canadians. That’s how many plan to buy a home within the next year. This comes from a new BMOsurvey, which also found the national average price buyers expect to pay is about $474,000. That jumps to $580,000 in Toronto and $603,000 for Vancouver buyers. Most concerning...
Canadians are more gung-ho than ever to buy a house. RBC’s latest Home Ownership Poll found that nearly a third of Canadians (32%) still expect to buy a home within the next two years. That’s the highest level of homebuying intention Canada has seen since 2010, and up 7% from last year. This is despite a string of new mortgage...
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