Bank earnings announcements season ended this week with Canada’s major banks announcing more than $5B in profits in Q1 2010. Main drivers were less losses on loans as the economy recovers, along with personal loans and mortgages.

This is great news for shareholders, but probably not so great for mortgage shoppers, as highlights our story earlier this week about how Canadian’s lender loyalty could be costing them thousands of dollars over the years. TD was so happy with the results, that they’re giving their employees an extra day off next week!

Here is a breakdown of [...] Continue Reading…

RateSupermarket.ca Pledges to Inform Canadians of Mortgage Money Saving Options

TORONTO, March 9, 2010 … RateSupermarket.ca, Canadian consumers’ one-stop-site to quickly and easily compare over 500 mortgage rates from the country’s top providers, is embarking on a campaign to educate Canadians that shopping around for the best mortgage rates at renewal time could save them thousands.

“Mortgage rates are at near all time lows and many Canadians are missing an opportunity to get better rates by staying loyal to their existing mortgage providers,” said Kelvin Mangaroo, Founder, RateSupermarket.ca. “We want to let Canadians know that they have many options when renewing [...] Continue Reading…

Rumour has it that the biggest question coming out of the new mortgage rules announced by the Finance Minister last month, which was what is the exact “higher” mortgage rate that clients will now have to qualify for, should be announced soon.

It appears that the new qualifying rate, which goes into effect on April 19, 2010, that all customers with less than a 20% deposit and are trying to secure a variable rate mortgage or any fixed product under 5 years will need to qualify for the higher of:

the chartered banks 5-year fixed posted [...] Continue Reading…

BMO (Bank of Montreal) has introduced a new 3.75% 5 year fixed mortgage with a maximum amortization period of 25 years. The current maximum amortization period is up to 35 years. Here are the details on this mortgage special:

Allows customers to repay their mortgage faster with a maximum 25-
year or less amortization
Saves homeowners over $67,000 in interest costs compared to leading
competitors’ five-year special fixed rate at 4.09% and 35-
year amortization [...] Continue Reading…

The Bank of Canada did as expected this morning and kept interest rates steady. They will maintain their key interest rate, the target for the overnight rate at 0.25%, and reiterated their commitment to hold rates at current levels until the end of Q2 2010.

They cited that the global economic recovery is being fuelled by domestic growth in emerging markets, while the western world’s recovery is due to the monetary and fiscal stimulus by governments.

Closer to home in Canada, economic activity has been higher than expected back in January as the economy grew by an annualized rate of [...] Continue Reading…

I wrote on Friday how I called the Finance Ministry and couldn’t get ahold of anyone to update me on the latest credit card rule changes and left a message at 9:08am on February 26, 2010. Well the wait wasn’t that long as a cheerful employee called me back today Monday at 1.35pm. Although it wasn’t the most helpful call as they said that the Minstry of Finance was working on updating the press release I had identified as not entirely complete, and they took my email address and said I’d be sent an update when it was [...] Continue Reading…

The search for the new credit card rules continues. I had put a call in the Finance Ministry today and they couldn’t put me in touch with anyone, so I was told to leave a message and someone will “call me back”. The wait begins today at 9:08am on February 26, 2010. Nonetheless, I found the rules that were published in the Canada Gazette on September 9, 2009.

Here is a summary of the credit card rule changes that came into effect on Jan 1, 2010 and below are the ones that will come in later in [...] Continue Reading…

We wrote about the new credit card regulations that came into effect on January 2010, and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information on it. Searches for “new credit card regulations” and “canadian credit card legislation” brought up the same Ministry of Finance release from Sep. We did find some details on the American Express site and this is what they had to say about the changes:

Credit card limits

Before: Prior to January 1st, 2010, under Canadian law, credit card companies were able to increase the limit on credit cards. Always thought this [...] Continue Reading…

The US government passed a new law back in May 2009 regarding stricter credit card regulations which went into effect today, February 22, 2010. It is aimed at credit card issuers and will try to eliminate bad credit card practices and was set up to help protect vulnerable Americans who are already having trouble with their debt. The American government is hoping this will help millions of people get out of bad credit and debt problems from their credit cards and over-leveraged mortgages brought on by the global economic collapse, and the US housing crisis.

The [...] Continue Reading…

If you’ve just returned from holiday in the Caymans, and didn’t have your BlackBerry with you on the beach, you may not have yet heard that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced 3 main mortgage rule changes that will go into effect on April 19, 2010. If you were here, then you know this has been all over the news and there is some confusion with the details, and how they will impact the mortgage industry.

We listed the main points on why these rules won’t have a huge impact, and the biggest question coming out of this is what [...] Continue Reading…