403-681-4376
8AM - 5PM Mon - Fri
103E – 1144 29th Ave NE
Mark Herman – Calgary Mortgage Broker

The Virus & Deferring: Another reason not to have your mortgage at your bank

April 1, 2020 mortgage renewal, Mortgage Rules, Uncategorized

Another reason not to have your mortgage at your main bank…
Many home owners have all their banking in one place for convenience but this is another “trap.” If everything is at your favorite bank, they can see:

  • from your pay deposits if you are still working, or are receiving EI payments.
  • what your debts and minimum payments are,
  • your savings & checking balances, what your Line-of-credit is, and your credit score.
  • they know the value of your home and the mortgage amount.

With all of this data on hand, the bank can decline your deferral and suggest that you use more funds from savings or line-of-credit to make the payments.

Mortgage Mark Herman, Top Calgary Mortgage Broker

Someone who has lost their job, or has reduced pay, due to the virus, is not going to react well to having their bank tell them to continue to make payments from savings or LOCs.

The Deferral Trap
If you have the ability to not defer and can continue to make the payments it will keep you out of the “Deferral Trap.” The “Trap” is when all the payments that were deferred, and the interest not yet paid, needs to be repaid or the lender could renew you at any rate they want; like posted rates. The only way you could change banks and/or still get a competitive rate would be to catch up all the owed funds.

Up to the Banks to allow you to defer … or not.
The mortgage insurers are leaving it to the lenders to decide if they will defer payments or not and the banks have not published any guidelines on how they are going to deal with this. Reviews so far range from, “super-easy, no questions asked, deferred for 6 months” to the other end of the spectrum with “your mortgage is too new” or if you have not been laid off, have not tested positive for Covid-19, or your credit is not good enough, or they want to redo the entire mortgage application, then it is their choice to allow the deferral. The way around this would be to contact your mortgage insurer directly to see if you can work through them if your bank is not cooperating.