CANADIAN MORTGAGE VIEWS

Gary Marr of the National Post has written a great article regarding those deal mortgages banks want to offer you. It’s almost a chicken-and-egg argument, deciding whether the government comes first in the crackdown on consumer borrowing or if the banks should be responsible for reining in Canadian debt. This month, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty sounded like he’d had enough of banks posturing for the federal government to get tougher on borrowers and called on financial institutions to clamp down on their own customers. “I’ve tightened up the mortgage insurance market three times … I really don’t want to do it again,” he told reporters while commenting on the condominium sector. While some bank chief executives have put it on themselves to tighten their own lending rules, others continue to look to Ottawa to take the lead. In the interim, all you have to do is walk into a branch, grab some pamphlets and you will see an array of offers that could get you into even more debt trouble

As the deadline for banks to disclose their penalty calculations draws closer, this topic of penalties will be more prevalent. As clients become more aware, will it be a new area of competition forcing lenders to change standard charge terms and all play on the same level field? Breaking your mortgage: Understanding the rules You can pay a high price to refinance a mortgage before maturity. Lenders will soon have to give more information on what to expect. By Ellen Roseman Mortgage rates are falling. You want to break your closed mortgage and get a new five-year loan at 2.99 per cent. Hold on. Take a deep breath. Talk to your lender first. Find out how much you will have to pay to get out of your mortgage early. The penalty could wipe out all your profit on the deal. Mortgage penalties come as a big surprise to borrowers who aren’t prepared for them. Banks are often unprepared as well, since the information is buried in the fine print of a mortgage contract. As a result,