Sunday, April 7, 2013

Types of Mortgages

By Roger Frost


While a mortgage is fundamentally a loan that is secured against your home, there are many variations to the type of mortgage that can be used for various needs. Based on your goals and risk characteristics there may be a number of different mortgage products that will meet your needs.

A Pre-Approved mortgage is a Free and No-Obligation deal that lets you know before you go looking for your home or signing an offer to purchase, how much you can afford to borrow based on your qualification and personal credit rating. Most financial institutions will arrange the most competitive rates with longest rate guarantee period that goes up to 120 days - if rates go higher, your rate will not be affected, and if rates go lower, you get the lower rate. This protection is solely responsible for savings thousands of dollars for many people who obtained a pre-approval and the rates increased afterwards.

When interest rates fall, many borrowers want to renegotiate their mortgages but a few have the right to do so, unless their mortgages are fully open. But if you obtained a longer-term mortgage, insured by CMHC, you can prepay it on payment of 3 months interest penalty - a lot cheaper than the Interest Rate Differential (IRD), which is the difference between the mortgage rate and current rates, on the outstanding balance, for the rest of the mortgage term.

If you obtained an insured mortgage after April 1'st, 1997, the premium you paid on the mortgage is now portable to another property (if you closed before this date, it is not portable, meaning that if you bought another home and your mortgage needed to be insured, you must pay the applicable premium again.

An open mortgage allows you the flexibility to repay the mortgage at any time without penalty. Open mortgages are available in shorter terms, 6 months or 1 year only, and the interest rate is higher than closed mortgages as much as 1%, or more. They are normally chosen if you are thinking of selling your home, or if expecting to pay off the whole mortgage from the sale of a another property, or an inheritance.

Use the equity in your home that you have built up to purchase investments (where interest costs would be deductible against the earned income), finance home renovations, buy a car, or any other reasonable needs, with rates as low as prime. They can be arranged up to 75% of the purchase price or value of the home, and should you need more, we can arrange another secured line of credit as a 2'nd mortgage up to 90%. Accessing the available credit is as simple as writing a cheque, the issued credit and/or debit card. You do not have to draw the money until you need it, and once you make a withdrawal, you can pay of your balance at any time or make monthly payments as low as interest only. As you pay down the balance, you have that much more available credit (revolving credit).




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