Happy Clients Are Gold

How important is client satisfaction to a mortgage broker? The answer is in this stat: A whopping 82% of broker clients find out about their broker via referral. (Source: Maritz/CAAMP) Existing clients are gold. As a broker, they’re our best source of new business. That’s why it pays to take care of and invest in them. […]

Top 5 Mortgage Trends of 2011

Cheap money fuelled anotherbuoyant year for real estate in 2011. That helped housing values climb a wall of worry (prices rose another 4.6% Y/Y as of November) despite numerous predictions of a correction. Mortgage balances went along for the ride, growing another 7%. 2011 was a year marked by new mortgage regulations and a rate market that continually surprised most […]

2 Out of 3 Don’t Shop at Renewal

Every now and then we see a mortgage stat that’s a jaw-dropper. This finding from Manulife Bank is one of them. It suggests there are a lot more people with money to burn than one might expect. Manulife recently surveyed 1,000 Canadian homeowners between the ages of 30 to 59. Among respondents with a mortgage, two-thirds (65%) did not […]

Less Broker in Your Broker

“There are lenders that are taking the brokering out of brokering” — IMBAPresident Albert Collu, via CMP That line is symbolic of what’s happening in our business. The face of mortgage brokering is changing. Lender policies meant to drive efficiencies are impairing brokers from doing their jobs. This is no more evident than with volume minimums. More […]

RBC Signals That VRMs Too Costly

RBC, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, has cut its variable rate discount by 0.20 percentage points. The change is effective tomorrow. That lifts its advertised variable rate from 2.35% (prime – 0.65%) to 2.55% (prime – 0.45%). Given that lenders travel in packs, it’s likely that some other banks and non-banks will follow suit and reduce their […]

Our Parents’ First Mortgage

81% of Ontarians say it’s more difficult to own a home now than it was for their parents. That comes from this Ipsos Reid/Ontario Real Estate Association survey. That’s interesting because our parents had to put down 25% to purchase a home. Young buyers nowadays can get their foot in the door with just 5% down. […]

Tweaked ARM addresses broker concerns over alternative lending

With tweaks to its variable-rate mortgage, Equitable Trust is acknowledging what many brokers fear: one or two years on the alternative side can improve a client’s credit, but often isn’t enough to get them into the A sphere. “Every borrower who goes to the Alt-A/B sphere aims to be there only for one or two […]

Ontario broker lobbies for tighter ‘mortgage suitability’ regs

By Vernon Clement Jones The head of a large Ontario brokerage – and VP of the province’s mortgage broker association, IMBA – is lobbying for “better-defined” guidelines around “mortgage suitability” in the governing act, arguing it would help fend off competition from the banks. “It’s something that’s much talked about among brokers, many of who […]

The best and worst ways to raise cash quickly

Despite even the most careful planning, people can find themselves needing to raise cash on short notice. These situations are often emergencies and the pressures and worry that go with them often lead people to take the fastest or easiest routes to raising cash, but not necessarily the best. To the extent that someone can […]

Brokers facing uphill battle to win bigger cut of $215B HELOC market

By Vernon Clement Jones Home equity lines of credit represent 22 per cent of all Canadian mortgages, or a whopping $215 billion, according to a new CAAMP report – the first to track that segment of the market largely closed to brokers. “As far as we know this is the first time anyone has tracked […]

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