Is My Mortgage Portable? The question: ‘Is my mortgage portable?’ The answer most often given: ‘Yes.’ This answer is increasingly wrong. In reality, you may qualify to move 80% or less of the current balance. The proper question: ‘Do I need to re-qualify for my current mortgage to move to a new home?’ The proper […]

Ten Things to Know About Prime & Your Mortgage 1.Fixed-rate mortgage holders are not affected by Bank of Canada rate changes during their current term. Only those in either adjustable-rate or variable-rate mortgages need read on. 2.On July 12 lenders increased variable-rate borrowing costs by 0.25% to match the Bank of Canada increase of the […]

CHIP News: Top 3 Misconceptions About Reverse Mortgages In Canada I recently read an article by Jamie Hopkins in Forbes magazine, entitled “Americans Don’t Even Know What Their Most Important Retirement Asset Is”. The article highlighted 3 common misconceptions about reverse mortgages and unsurprisingly, they are prevalent in Canada as well as in the U.S. […]

Trivia question: What is the interest rate you’re paying on your various debts? Interest rates seem vitally important in a week in which the Bank of Canada raised its benchmark lending rate for the first time in seven years, but they’re not what you should be focusing on as you prepare for the possibility of […]

New record: $2,090 a month is average cost of one-bedroom rental in Vancouver For more than a year, Vancouver has taken top spot for the most expensive city to rent in Canada and now the city of glass has broken another record. In July, the average price of rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver […]

Last week Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Poloz eliminated any doubt about the BoC’s near-term plans. During an interview on CNBC he said that the two 0.25% overnight-rate cuts that the Bank made in 2015 in response to the oil-price shock have “done their job” and he expressed confidence that our economy’s “surprisingly” strong first-quarter […]

The Bank of Canada is raising its target for the overnight rate to 3/4 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 1 per cent and the deposit rate is 1/2 per cent. Recent data have bolstered the Bank’s confidence in its outlook for above-potential growth and the absorption of excess capacity in the economy. The […]

For Immediate release July 12, 2017 Vancouver, B.C. – For the first time in seven years, the Bank of Canada announced today that it was hiking its key overnight rate by a quarter percentage point (25 basis points) bringing it to 0.75 percent, as the economy has staged a broadly based economic expansion this year. […]

The average person if stopped on the street and asked; Are today’s low interest rates driving up house prices? Would likely say ‘yes’. They would be wrong. We can let their lack of understanding pass, after all we can agree that math mostly sucks. However to ask a Realtor, Banker, or your Mortgage Broker this […]

OSFI Proposes Tighter Mortgage Underwriting Standards Exactly one year after OSFI said it would review its B-20 guidelines and scrutinize underwriting standards further, the banking regulator made good on that promise. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released various proposals on Thursday to further tighten mortgage underwriting standards at federally regulated lenders. The biggest change […]