Mortgage - Richmond Hill
Being a broker, I can offer you choices even when your situation is seemingly tough or complex. This can range from having poor credit, being self-employed, or needing an unusually large mortgage; all the way to structuring secondary, commercial, cross collateral, and construction loans.After doing an undergrad degree at York University, I found myself looking at several career paths. I love being a mortgage broker in this city. What I do lets me make a tangible positive difference in people’s lives.
Money is a huge part of our lives. It also happens to be the most shunned part. Since April 2012, I’ve been helping people be on a First-Name-Basis with their Money.Being on a First-Name-Basis with Your Money.Pick any major news outlet and choose a single weekly news cast at random. My guess is you would have no trouble finding a ‘doom and gloom’ article about the economy. Debt crisis, household debt levels, recession etc. … sound familiar? Has any such article ever made you change your spending behavior or make you reach for a calculator? I’d bet not. You’re not alone! In my humble experience, meaningful positive change and willingness to learn are seldom results of tabloid anxiety.
Knowing how debt works and how to avoid the bad kind is nevertheless important. For most people, their mortgage is the single largest loan they have. Most mortgages aren’t particularly complex and only have a few moving parts. If you were going to take a half an hour to understand your money, why not start with the single largest part of it.It’s never too early or too late to learn about your mortgage. My consultations are free of charge and do not obligate you to doing any business with me.
Despite popular belief, there are dozens of great lenders to choose from when you are getting a mortgage. Each lender will have several programs geared towards clients with various needs. In many cases you can choose from amongst several options when making your decision. A single bank’s representative will not, and in most cases, cannot offer you more than the few options their institution has. Legally, their job is to look out for the interest of their employer.
As brokers, we know mortgages very well because this is all we do. By and large, we aren’t forced to cross sell other credit and investment products. Because the majority of our business is centered on referrals, we tend to work in teams – allowing us access to other industry professionals and their expertise.Being a broker, I can offer you choices even when your situation is seemingly tough or complex. This can range from having poor credit, being self-employed, or needing an unusually large mortgage; all the way to structuring secondary, commercial, cross collateral, and construction loans.
Being a mortgage broker in Toronto means that your experience has taken you through every conceivable type of client and property. The size and diversity of the local market, means that a good mortgage broker in Toronto is often the first to gain access to new lenders and new program features. Investor capital comes to this city in search of investment opportunities. This is where mortgage brokers go to fund the more unique and complex mortgages.
The Accredited Mortgage Professional (AMP) designation is the only nationally recognized designation for mortgage agents and brokers. Holders of the AMP designation are required to be active professionals dedicated to continued education and a higher standard of industry practice.
|
Business Operation Hours
|
|
Monday
|
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
|
|
Tuesday
|
9:00 AM to
5:00 PM
|
|
Wednesday
|
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
|
|
Thursday
|
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
|
|
Friday
|
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
|
|
Saturday
|
Closed
|
|
Sunday
|
Closed
|
Additional Information
So you’ve had your mortgage for a few years and in all this time, you’ve done really well with it. You’ve stayed on track and made all your payments on time. But now your term is coming up for renewal and you don’t know what to expect. Surely, being awesome has earned you the right to be treated preferentially by your bank.
Though not entirely unfounded, this line of thinking can end up costing you big on the rate you get at mortgage renewal time. Truth is, most people opt for complacency and settle for whatever their bank sends them in the mail. A few clients call to bargain, and some of them even get somewhere with their bargaining. So what do you do and where can you turn to save yourself some money in the coming few years?
After reviewing the offer sent to you by your bank, you may want to call a broker. Many lenders will offer competitive “transfer” or “switch” programs that can help you hop over to a more preferable lender at no cost. Any decent mortgage broker in Toronto will have access to at least a few lenders with such programs – giving you the opportunity to shop several places at once.
Compared to the 48% market share brokers held in the First Time Buyer space, lenders kept some 77% of their mortgage renewal business to themselves in 2013. So why aren’t more people going to see their broker about renewing their mortgage? And the answer is a two sided coin.
On one hand, mortgage origination, or the process of acquiring a new mortgage borrower is costly for every lender. Provided the client is solvent, keeping them is far more cost-effective than finding someone new to take their place. Consequently banks will go the extra mile in keeping their existing clients.
At the same time, being profit driven organizations, mortgage lenders will not rush to offer you rock bottom pricing as this will cut into their bottom line. As such, the terms offered will always have a little wiggle room for you to go after.
On the flip side, picking up the renewal business of your competitor can also be fairly lucrative and relatively low risk. This is the merit on which the ‘transfer’ or ‘switch’ programs are based. One such program, for example, will even go so far as to not ask for income supporting documentation from some prospective borrowers in hopes of simplifying the process of switching lenders. The idea is to simply shop your mortgage at as many lenders as possible to arrive at the most favourable renewal terms available.
If your mortgage is with an alternative lender, you stand to gain a lot by renewing or switching with a broker. After all, this may be a great opportunity of moving your mortgage over to a Triple-A lender. This could translate into immediate savings and set you on your way to full financial recovery. And even if your intention is to remain with your current lender, most alternative lenders will work with brokers to help their clients renew their mortgages.
Without pointing out any specific lenders, it is also worth mentioning that there have been cases, where lenders were undergoing Merger & Acquisition or were otherwise restructuring their portfolios. As such, the terms offered to many clients at renewal were far from competitive.
Product and Services
There has never been a more humbling time to be an economic forecaster. The move by the Bank of Canada to lower their overnight lending rate on January 21 2015 has taken most by surprise. Yet more surprising still, was the response of the banking community to BOC’s decision. Technically speaking, every lender, be they a bank, trust, credit union, or monoline – has the option of setting their own Prime Lending Rates. If you read your contracts carefully, all your variable rate products (e.g. credit cards, lines of credit, variable rate mortgages etc.) are based on their lender’s Prime Lending Rate.
Traditionally, fluctuations proposed by the Bank of Canada are mirrored by the banks although no formal obligation to do so exists. The expectation, however, was for the already low mortgage interest rates to go even lower. This would not make it easier to qualify for a variable rate product but would simply offer savings to those who opted for a variable alternative.
Instead, what followed the BOC’s decision was the banks’ reluctance to part with the 0.25% cost reduction and pass the savings along to the consumer. After almost a week of persistent backlashing by the media, the banks relented and coughed up 0.15%. And although for many people this means lower mortgage interest rates, we should not look past the fact that we were shortchanged.
First off, the Bank of Canada uses interest rates to stimulate or cool down the economy as to promote stability and healthy growth. Never having been an economist myself, and perhaps because of it, my definition of the economy evidently differs from that of the banks. To me, 1.08 million businesses that employ Canadians and the 9.62 million Canadians who have mortgages are more likely to be the intended recipients of the stimulus than the major banks. I see little sense in a stimulus that fails to reach the economy because the banks are having a hard time parting with it.
Secondly and perhaps closer to home for a mortgage broker, is the message this sort of move sends to variable rate mortgage borrowers. CAAMP estimates that in 2013 approximately 20% of Canadians chose a variable rate mortgage and about 5% went with a hybrid mortgage product that may incorporate a variable or a line of credit component. These are the people that were left scratching their heads wondering why anyone would ever renew this sort of contract.
Mortgage professionals are often asked to explain the difference between fixed and variable rates or to advise on the more appropriate choice given a client’s financial situation. My typical reaction would include reviewing the client’s family budget and discussing the possibility of an increase in their mortgage payment. In today’s market, you’re bound to get a historically low mortgage interest rate either way you slice it.
When you sign up for a variable rate mortgage though, you accept the risk of a fluctuating interest rate (and mortgage payment) in hopes of capturing the historical gains variable rate mortgages offer. The idea is that your rate can fluctuate both ways and for reasons other than your bank deciding to boost Q1 profits.
The bottom line is, once again, the banks decided not to play us straight. This is why lender loyalty will remain a mystery to me. In fact, industry stats show that when it comes to mortgage interest rates, the majority of us put unwarranted loyalty and trust in our banks. CAAMP’s fall 2014 report, for example, compares 2.89% as the average interest rate new mortgage borrowers got in the previous year, with 3.12% as the average interest rate received at renewal over the same time period. Considering that it’s cheaper for a bank to keep an existing client than to originate a new one, it’s clear that loyalty to your bank is something you are paying for.
Despite being neither an economist, nor a financial analyst , but whilst having nothing to lose by it– I too will try my hand at reading the tea leaves for March 4th 2015 when the Bank of Canada is scheduled to announce their next decision concerning the overnight interest rate. Wholly unable to achieve the level of stimulus they intended, the BOC will hold the overnight rate at 0.75% hesitant to lower it any further for the moment; and will look to the banks to release the 10 basis points of stimulus they’ve thus far held hostage. After all, it’s hard to imagine that the Prime Lending Rate adjustments would have taken this long to implement had things gone the opposite way. The slow response and the half measures in reducing Prime Lending Rates will likely produce inconclusive economic data from which no real decision can be made.
Languages Spoken
English
Payment Options
Visa,Master Card,Cash,Check
