Nearly one-third of Canadian homeowners have fallen into despair over their mortgage situation, according to a new survey conducted by the Real Estate and Mortgage Institute of Canada (REMIC).
In a poll of 1,000 Canadian adults, 34.1% of respondents said that “they regret the mortgage that they are currently in” while 21.8% complained that “interest rate hikes have made it unaffordable” and 12.3% lamented about being locked in at “a bad rate.” Nearly half (45.2%) of the respondents believed they will not be able to pay off their mortgages until age 60.
However, only 30.2% of the respondents said they would have purchased a less expensive property if they knew mortgage rates would go up. And over half of those polled were unable to cite the current Canadian interest rate.
While over half of the respondents (57%) had a bank arrange their mortgage, only 43.1% answered “maybe” when asked if banks had the best mortgage rates, while 10.5% said “yes.” And 56% of women think that banks have the best rates versus 43.9% of men.
“Having blind faith in banks could be an expensive mistake for homebuyers. Homeowners tend to blindly and gratefully take what they are told from the bank and spend less time comparing mortgage rates than they do comparing credit cards,” said Joe White, president and CEO of REMIC. “Canadians believe that a bank would never give them a mortgage that they can’t afford, but is a bank really concerned about your quality of life and factoring that into the monthly mortgage calculation? We teach that mortgage brokers need to go further. The best brokers will advise with balance between purchasing a property and a reasonable quality of life. A homeowner who qualifies at a bank with great credit can do very well with a mortgage broker and get a very competitive rate.”
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