Today's mortgage rates in Ontario

I've got prime minus 0.1% variable rate which is 2.15% now.

The minimum I can see for fixed rate is 3.89% for 5 years closed mortgage (15% allowed to pay extra per month, or once a year).

And yes, 35 year mortgages are still available in Canada.
They say it may happen the amortization period can be reduced to 30 or even 25 years to make sure the American mortgage bubble won't happen here in Canada.

We'll see...

The lowest mortgage interest rate

Didn't update this resource for a while, but now wanted to make a remark about the lowest mortgage interest rate in Canada for the last decades.

Prime rate is 2.25% now,
5 years variable can be taken now for prime – 0.1%, i.e. 2.15% which is incredible low I must say.

Economy experiences not the best times so this low rate can be something that government uses to warm the activity on market. Since there is no major signs of the recovery I guess such low rate will be for a quite long time.

The Japanese interest rate is near 0% for a long time so why you think it's impossible in North America as well?

Current mortgage rates in Canada

First Line Mortgages (CIBC company) now offers
3.35% for 2 years fixed mortgage
4.69% for 5 years,
or Prime+0.40% for variable mortgage,
or Prime+1.50% for open variable mortgage.
CIBC prime is 2.25% now.

I guess such low rates may long until the financial crisis and our local great depression is over, I personally don't think the situation is dramatically changed for the next at least half a year.

Financial industry fears and hopes

The time of financially unstable world may be interesting or scaring,
but I think it's definitely better to have debts than savings now.

If US or Canadian government decides devaluate their currency it may bring a lot of chaos to markets (not financial markets only) but a dollar falling 50% makes your debt falling the same as well. And at the same time your savings fall the same time... if you keep them in mutual funds or just banks of course...

What is it for

Actually I wanted to post here some news from mortgage world with minimal comments of a non-professional next-door person.

Hopefully I will have more time doing this,
then will find these notes in 10 years so we'll laugh under them together.

For now Canadian CIBC bank offers 4.4% for 5 years fixed mortgage.
Honestly it's a bit better I have now (4.75% fixed) but my mortgage renewal is in December 2010 so it probably doesn't make sense to switch because the penalty may be higher than possible savings.

Happy New Year

The financial crisis we see these days may touch (and definitely will touch) mortgage and loan industry as well so that may happen our pessimistic forecasts for 2009th can be even too optimistic :)

But anyway I would like to say Happy New Year,
and let's hope for the best.

We can limit our wishes by at least health and prosperity.
The rest can wait until 2010.

Stay tuned.
Mortgage blog at mortgator.com.

Hello

Today I'm here to say hello.

My name is Sergey, and I'm starting a new blog.

Blog about mortgages, financial institutes and all the topics around that.

Thank you for being so kind being here.