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When your mortgage is up for renewal you do have options.  Believe it or not nearly 70% of Canadians sign their mortgage renewal letter without actually considering other options for a better rate or product.  When you receive a renewal letter from your lender, the lender (mainly banks) will not offer you the best discount rate.   They are hoping (and in most cases are correct) that you will just sign the renewal letter and send it back to the lender.  The lenders save allot of money by taken this approach.
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I attended a formal investment dinner last night given by one of my investment adviser colleague’s.  
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The main objective of any mortgage borrower is to pay down there mortgage as soon as possible.  Naturally coming up with the money to do this is not that easy.  Two ways to chip away at your mortgage is to take an accelerated payment frequency and take advantage of the automatic payment increase allowed on your mortgage by your mortgage lender.  Here is an example.
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At mortgage renewal time your mortgage is completely OPEN.  This means the contract with your current mortgage lender is over.  You do have the option to either stay with your existing lender or move too another lender for better terms and conditions.  Moving to a new lender will require you to re-qualify, however if the terms and conditions are much better then what the existing lender is offering, it makes sense.
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There has being a tremendous amount of chatter and media news over recent mortgage rules changes implemented by Government of Canada and Superintended of Financial Services.  Yes these new rules seemed to have possibly effected the market or maybe it is just bad timing (the market had to slow down at some point).  Below is a simplified review of the changes.  As you will see it is not the end of the world and some mortgage products never changed at all.
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Coming into the Fall Housing Market mortgage rates still remain very low and represent a great opportunity for People purchasing a home or refinancing their existing home.  Current best rates available are as follows:
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We have seen more regulatory changes to the mortgage financing industry over the past couple of months and pretty much every year for the past four years.  One other change that is in the works is a reduction on the maximum loan to value allowed for Secured Line’s of Credit.  Right now a Secured Line of Credit can go up to 80% of a property value.  This could be cut to 65%.  With generally mortgage refinancing now at 80% (it was 95%  four years ago) regulators are trimming back how much equity a borrower can pull out of their properties.
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The federal budget due March 29 almost certainly will unveil the government’s thinking on the future of the Canadian covered bond market. This may prove strangely important, because covered bonds lie at the heart of one of the most contentious public policy issues in the Canadian financial system.
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Typically sources of down payment have to come from the borrower’s own resources .  These would include:
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It looks like fixed rates may be possibly moving upwards tomorrow or Friday.  This is based on the an increase in yield on the 5 year Government bond.  The 5 year government bond (which leads mortgage fixed rates) sprang up to 1.51% today.  That is a 3 1/2 month high.  If yield hold above 1.50% we could see an increase in mortgage fixed rates.
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