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Blog by Paula Siemens

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New Policy Changes

March 8th, 2010

The Federal Government announced that effective April 19th significant changes will take place to mortgage qualification. Some of these changes have been publishe! d, while others are being slid into effect without the publics' knowledge. The changes being made are:

All variable rate clients and anyone taking less than a 5 yr fixed term must qualify at the "posted rate". Until this morning n ...

Jim Flaherty's Announcement Today

February 16th, 2010

Jim Flaherty announced today that effective April 19, 2010 buyers will have to qualify under this set of guidelines:

  • Any borrower arranging a mortgage less than 5 years in term or a variable rate mortgage must be qualified as if they are taking a 5-year term. It is not yet clear whether there will be a huge impact, as variable rate mortgages and terms of 3 years or less are alread ...

Bank of Canada Leaves Rate Unchanged

October 20th, 2009

The Bank of Canada announced today that they are leaving the overnight rate unchanged. They also indicated that they will conditionally keep their plan to leave rates unchanged until the 2nd quarter of 2010. The bond market thought that the Bank of Canada would go back on their word to leave rates alone after Australia and Israel raised their overnight rates, and after strong employment data. ...

Market Update

October 5th, 2009

Great news. We are finally seeing variable rate mortgages priced below prime. We have not seen any mortgage even close to prime for the past 12 months. In September 2008 we had rates as low as prime -.60% which quickly changed to prime and then to prime + 1% by the end of the first week in October.

We hope that this downward trend in the variable rate market will continue into spring 2010. V ...

Renovation Credit

June 18th, 2009

As many of you know the Federal Government came announced a new tax credit (HRTC) for those individuals doing renovations to their home.

The renovations must occur between January 27th 2009 and February 1st 2010. The HRTC can be claimed for renovations and lasting alterations to a dwelling, or the land on which it sits. You must have proper receipts to benefit from this program the Governmen ...

Your Mortgage Strategy

June 15th, 2009

As you know the fixed rates have had 2 significant jumps over the past 10-14 days. This is a result of the bond market activity and shrinking spreads for the lenders.

The Bank of Canada has held rates as is and will continue to do so for another year most likely. Anyone in "old" variable rate mortgages will have a significant discount below prime and should likely stay floating. I would rec ...

Market Update

June 15th, 2009

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Federal Government Renovation Credit

March 9th, 2009

Bank of Canada Reduces the Overnight Rate by .50bps

January 20th, 2009

Bank of Canada

July 28th, 2008

The Bank of Canada left the overnight rate unchanged we is what we expected. The Governor cited that the country is working within the expected CPI. This is very good news to the variable rate clients as it gives more reason to stay put in their variable rate mortgages, as the spread between variable @ 4.05% today and fixed rates @ 5.45% on average increases.

Many lenders have adopted the ne ...

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