Comments on: Anecdotes and Advice from a First Time Home Buyer Part 1 – First Steps and Pre-Approved Mortgages

By: Anecdotes and Advice from a First Time Home Buyer Part 2 - Down Payments and Financing

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:01:52 +0000

[...] See Part 1 – First Steps and Pre-Approved Mortgages. [...]

By: FourPillars

FourPillars — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:13:48 +0000

NSB – I used Mortgage Intelligence as well – quite good.

Mike

By: NeverStopBuying.com

NeverStopBuying.com — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:45:08 +0000

Regarding the post, sometimes you have 120-day rate guarantee, and I have read that multiple credit checks within a week doesn’t hurt your credit rating, as lenders can see that you are shopping around for mortgage

I have used Mortgage Intelligence broker last year, got the best rate (from Desjardins)

This year I just got a HELOC with TD, as I bank with TD, and they matched CIBC’s HELOC offers (P-1% for 3 months)

Big 5 has the power to match any rate essentially, but would you visit 5 banks to pin one against another, or let the broker do the work for you?

By: the Wealthy Canadian

the Wealthy Canadian — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:28:13 +0000

Why not go with one (or more) mortgage broker(s) and do your own shopping around as well? I don’t recall having to sign anything with a broker in the shopping around phase.

By: FourPillars

FourPillars — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:39:59 +0000

Telly – no, the mortgage on my house came up for renewal. I called two mortgage brokers to make sure I wasn’t getting screwed on the rate.

One of them was really slow which is why I ended up going with the one I used.

Mike

By: telly

telly — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:32:10 +0000

Mike,

Did you buy two properties this year?

By: FourPillars

FourPillars — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:19:34 +0000

Sods – that’s unfortunate. I wouldn’t let that experience turn you off mortgage brokers however. I used two of them this year and I found that worked well. Maybe the lesson is that if they try to get you to sign with some “bank” you never heard of then run away?

Mike

By: Sods

Sods — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:21:59 +0000

We had a brutal experience with a mortgage broker. I assume it was isolated, but i will never use one again as it almost cost us our house and thousands of dollars.

Basically what happened was, since Brokers get commission from the lenders, they “sell” the lenders that pay them better. Our broker found a lender i had never heard about “ResMor” who made us jump through hoops to get approved, us being naive, did what the broker reccomended. We were approved finally (took 2 months and mounds of paperwork), and then they refused to fund us 24 hours before because they thought our condo corp was “underfunded”. So we had to scramble for a mortgage, push back closing, pay lawyer fees etc. We ended up going to my parents credit union who got us approved and funded within 48 hours.

By: FourPillars

FourPillars — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:18:30 +0000

Sounds like you got a good deal Telly.

ThickenMyWallet.com has a similar post up today.

Mike

By: telly

telly — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:53:52 +0000

We had an interesting thing happen to us when we purchased our house…

Our realtor referred us to a mortgage specialist at RBC (they basically refer one another). His rates were substantially better than posted rates, including ING. The day before our house closed, the receptionist at our realtor’s office called us up and faxed us an offer she had received that day from another mortgage specialist at another bank. I spoke to our guy at RBC and he agreed to match the offer (dropped our rate by 0.11%).

Just something to keep in mind, generally realtors won’t go out of their way to help you secure a good mortgage rate but if you have a good relationship with them, it doesn’t hurt to ask them who they’d recommend and what they know current competitive rates to be.