Mortgage Minute: Your Questions Answered

Date Posted: February 28, 2023

Q: With the latest job reports in both Canada and the US. Will this prevent a recession and mortgage rates going up instead of coming down this year?

A: Obviously, the job report was extremely healthy. That being said, the inflation numbers come out today. It’ll be interesting to see what that number stands at. It's expected to come down quite a bit. And that should at least keep the Bank of Canada on the sidelines for a little bit. We'll see fixed rates go up a little bit, but we'll see a little bit of a roller coaster for the next couple of months and then it's expected that rates will start to steadily go down.

Q: With home title fraud on the rise, how can you protect yourself from this happening to you?

A: So a good way to protect yourself. Listen, if you if you purchase a home over the last 15 years, good chance that you already have title insurance. It's something that the lawyers put on. But if you've had your home for longer than 15 or 20 years, you might want to check with the lawyer that that did the transaction for you and find out whether you have title insurance. And if you don't, it's you know, it's a few hundred dollars to get this title insurance. And then what that does is that protects you in case anybody does. Does do any fraud against you on your property and perpetrates you then the title insurance company takes care of it for you.

Q: A couple has great rate of 2.29% on their current mortgage with two and a half years left. But they want to sell our current home and buy another one. What options do they have to keep this great rate and move it to our new home?

A: Most lenders offer portable mortgages. You can go on to online mortgage brokerages and they offer you these great rates, but they take away some of the some of the things that should come with a mortgage, like the portability in this circumstance. We have had the odd occasion, where our clients called us and said, my lender's telling me it's not portable. We don't deal with any lender that doesn't do portable mortgages because of scenarios just like this. You get to transfer the mortgage over as long as the closing dates align. Most lenders have a 90 day period where you can put the mortgage over, so, if the sale happens and the purchase happened within 90 days of each other, you can take the mortgage over from one house to the other and all you pay is administration fee.

Q: What about bridge financing? People are wondering if it's expensive.

A: The bridge financing itself is inexpensive, but people need to understand that a bridge loan is only available if you've purchased a home at no conditions and sold the home in no conditions. Your house being for sale doesn't trigger a bridge loan, because if your house is just for sale and hasn't sold yet, you have to do financing. But if it's actually sold firm with no conditions and your purchase is firm with no conditions then you can do a bridge loan again, most lenders will let you do up to 90/120 days. The bridge loan itself is not expensive, but you got to remember that you own two homes for that period of time, two insurances, two utilities, two mortgages.

For more information, reach out to a Mortgage Broker today!

To watch the full CTV Morning Live segment with Frank Napolitano; click here