80% Conventional?!

Welcome to a new age of mortgage borrowing. All the rules have been thrown out and the new ones are being written every day, after years of the same lender attitudes that kept many people from home ownership.
The Bank Act has been amended as of April 23, 2007 to change the conventional financing ceiling from 75% to 80% of the value of the property. This means that no longer will borrowers be paying high ratio mortgage premiums provided they have either a 20% downpayment or 20% equity in the property. This will save thousands of dollars in fees that otherwise cut into a homeowners equity.
This new rule also applies to revenue property financing although lenders are a little bit slower to announce that they are willing to go the full 80%. Remember that Canadian lenders tend to run pretty conservative (read tight) when it comes to Canadians trying to make some money at Real Estate investing.
Note also the new relaxed rules regarding borrowers who are newer to Canada and who might not yet have a long career track record. With good credit the waiting time to qualify for a mortgage has been drastically reduced. It is immigration that will be driving the net growth in this part of the world and the lending community is recognizing this.
It is about time that the mortgage world became reflective of today's borrower. New Canadians, Self Employed, and people with smaller downpayments can all buy and afford a home today like never before. The mortgage lenders are rewriting the rules and the winners are the borrowers.

US Sub-Prime Market

As this is extremely interesting news as we depend on a good US economy.
More and more people in the sub-prime market are defaulting on their payments making things extremely complex. With more and more defaults, and lenders straying away from lending to this market, there is an influx of property's on the market which is causing for drastically lower home costs. We can only wait to see what happens in the next few months. In our market up here, the Sub-Prime lenders are joining on board at a fast pace as we are still in a strong market. Hopefully we don't follow suit with our partners of the South.

How much can you afford?

To answer the comment posted by 'anonymous'...
With some great new rules that have come out in the past few months, you can qualify for a minimum of 12% more of a mortgage with good credit. Longer amortizations up to 40 years, increases this number even more.
There is so much competition out there that it's creating more and more mortgage solutions for everyone. To get into a lot of detail would take too long. I can definately answer your specific questions on email or by phone, just let me know.

Introduction

This is my first blog to make sure all works well.

If you need any questions regarding mortgages and so forth answered, please let me know here or by email christos@gitersos.com