Mortgage 101 – Award-Winning Mortgage Advice!

Newly awarded by the Canadian Mortgage industry for Best Media/Marketing Campaign across Canada, Clinton Wilkins, and Todd Veinotte chat about industry misconceptions, the importance of seeking advice from an unbiased mortgage professional, and the benefits of going to a full-service brokerage.

Todd Veinotte
Welcome to Mortgage 101, your guide to homeownership with Clinton Wilkins, the mortgage guru and myself Todd Veinotte and you gotta love The Police eh Clinton?

Clinton Wilkins
Love it!

Todd Veinotte
Do you seriously like the police? Or, are you just saying that just to appease me?

Clinton Wilkins
I do love it. And you know what, there’s no better way to spend your Saturday or Sunday than listening to some good music and hopefully some great mortgage advice. Yeah,

Todd Veinotte
And on an award-winning show!

Clinton Wilkins
Yes, I think a little applause is necessary. So we were nominated for Best Media/Marketing Campaign across the country in the Canadian Mortgage industry. And for our work that we’ve done here on Mortgage 101, we won! Which is awesome. Yeah, I was in Toronto just a few weeks ago, we took home a beautiful crystal. It’s sitting in my office in Halifax, if you want to come by and see it.

Todd Veinotte
Absolutely! And you actually invited me, which was nice of you. But unfortunately, my boss wouldn’t let me go.

Clinton Wilkins
Well, you know what, you have to be there to report the news. But I do want to thank our team here at Podstarter, where we’re recording our show every month. And as well as Rogers Sports Media, you know, the City News crew, for trusting me to give my opinion, and us to do our show for so many years, that really means a lot. But we wouldn’t be doing this, if it wasn’t for our listeners, or really, our customers at the end of the day; we wouldn’t be doing the show and still be here. So thank you for continuing to listen!

Todd Veinotte
it’s been a number of years. And for today, we got a lot to get to, we’re going to be talking with Bank of Canada. And obviously that’s the big story, which we’re going to jump into shortly. But, I think it’s important, because we do have new listeners all the time, to let everybody know a little bit more about you and what you do, again, for the new audience out there. As a mortgage broker, what a broker does etc.,. So let everybody know a bit about your history. I think that’s important for sure!

Clinton Wilkins
My name is Clinton Wilkins. I’m a mortgage broker. I’m located here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we have offices in downtown Halifax and downtown Dartmouth. I’ve been doing this for 19 years, and since I’ve been with our company, now we’ve done over 6000 transactions and over $1.5 billion in mortgages. Every day, I always say that I’ve seen everything, but I see something new. So that’s what I think is really interesting about mortgage lending. And I think right now, there’s just so many variances and differences. And I think the differences are more than the similarities between lenders and brokers. And it’s really so important for a consumer to seek the advice of an unbiased mortgage professional. So I’m glad you’re here with us. I’m glad that we’re able to share the news. And, you know, really my opinion on mortgage lending. And, I think it’s all about education, I think consumers are becoming more educated. And we are certainly here for them. We’re glad to be a part of the conversation.

Todd Veinotte
Okay, on the education piece. And again, we will get to Bank of Canada, but we got the entire show. So, I think it’s important to do a little bit of education. I think we could do that off the top. So what are some of the big misnomers that people present to you when it comes to your industry and mortgage lending? What are some of the big ones?

Clinton Wilkins
I don’t even know where to start. I think there’s just so many. I think back in the day, less now, some consumers think that the only reason that you would go to a mortgage broker is when you couldn’t be approved by your bank lender. That’s not the case! The consumers that we’re really seeing are educated, they are looking for good advice. And oftentimes, they are looking for the best rate. Although, we’re not so folk focused on having the very lowest rate, we will always want to be fair with customers, and there’s so much variance out there. I think it’s really interesting. The other thing that there’s a misconception about is if one lender is not going to approve you for a mortgage, you’re not going to get a mortgage. There are so many lenders out there in Canada, and everybody’s situation is different. And there certainly are some lenders that we deal with as mortgage professionals, that we have access to that a normal consumer just can’t; they can’t just walk in a bank branch and get. So, I think that’s really important to understand. Every consumer, and I say this about every mortgage file, is different. It’s like a snowflake, we look at their income, we look at their assets, and we look at their credit, and then really put together the best possible financial plan for them based on their circumstance.

Todd Veinotte
Yeah, you guys are kind of full service because you do have some in house people who will look at a financial plan. You’ve got an insurance and an insurance advisor in house and you do a yearly annual checkup with your clients. And I think that’s vital, right? And that’s something that not every board mortgage broker does. As certainly the banks don’t do, I think.

Clinton Wilkins
That’s really what sets us apart, Todd, to be honest, we are biased to our customers, we’re not biased so much to the lender. Yeah, we’re partners with these lenders, but the way that I look at it, is I think we lend our customers to this lender for the period of their mortgage. And when that mortgage comes up for renewal, we’d love going back and giving them the best advice. So many things change in people’s lives, Todd, people get divorced all the time. Sometimes, they have health issues, or matrimonial breakdown, and so many things change with consumers over the span of even their mortgage term. And that’s why it’s so important to really be involved and do those check- ins. And the one thing that I will say, and I don’t want to detract from the banks, they’re great partners of ours, we deal with many of the banks in the in the Big Five, but in that retail banking channel, let me tell you, there’s a lot of turnover, and those people only have the products that are available to them. And we need to remember that the number one job for someone who works at the bank, is to really return value to the shareholder. At the end of the day, they’re not as worried about the consumer. For us, we really believe that we’re in that relationship business. And we want our customers to come back, we really pride ourselves on getting five star reviews with the most reviews of any mortgage broker brokerage in Nova Scotia, for sure, and maybe Atlantic Canada; so pride ourselves on it. And we really pride ourselves on providing that five-star experience to every customer, it doesn’t matter for us if it’s $100,000 mortgage or a million dollar mortgage. For us, we want to make sure that we’re going to treat everyone the same. And that’s, really the most important to us.

Todd Veinotte
I would bet that there are times when you have somebody come to you who has a mortgage renewal coming up at the bank, and you look at their situation, and your advice is ‘you’re going to have to renew with a bank,’ for a variety of reasons, right?

Clinton Wilkins
Sometimes, it’s better for me to send the customer back to the bank, than it is for us to get involved. And, you know, we don’t want to do a transaction for transaction sake. We want to do transactions to put consumers in a better financial position. And that’s not just about the rate, Todd, although, rate is important. But, it’s not the be all and end all. It’s about improving their situation. And sometimes just based on their scenario, it makes the most sense for them to renew with their lender. And I think, for us saying that we’re unbiased, to the lender, we’re biased to the customer, I think that’s one thing that speaks to that, it’s, we want the customer to get the best possible financing for their needs. And sometimes we have to refer them back to their lender. And I mean, that’s okay, too.

Todd Veinotte
Here’s a question for you, we know what happens with REITs. And we will get to the bank. And we’ll do that in the next segment, for sure. But, let’s say somebody is renewing, and they had their mortgage at 1.5%, or 2%. And the renewal is five or whatever it’s going to be, and they then will have to deal with the stress test. If they’re going to not renew with their bank, you may look at that and say, look, you probably aren’t going to be able to get a mortgage with us, because of the stress test, you should renew. Does that happen?

Clinton Wilkins
Not always because they’ve actually changed some of the stress test rules so that if you’re doing a transfer of even a high ratio, insured mortgage, we don’t have to go back through the stress test. Again, they’ve already been stress tested. So on a direct transfer, which we consider a renewal, there are some options for customers to not go back through that stress test. So I think that’s really important to understand that the government really wants it to be fair business between lenders, and they don’t want consumers to be stuck with one lender, potentially at a higher interest rate, just because they can’t qualify with another. So lenders are certainly becoming a lot more liberal, I think on their debt servicing ratios, especially on a conventional mortgage. So we always hear ‘I can’t get approved more than 40% or 42%, or 44%; we’re certainly seeing some more extended ratios, specifically for conventional mortgage. So you know, under 80% of the property value, in terms of what they’re lending. For high ratio insured mortgages, there is still that hard stop that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Sagen, and Canada Guarantee put in, it’s 39%, and 44%. So that’s pretty much a hard stop for the insurers. But everybody’s situation is different. And that’s why I think every lender’s appetite is much different right now. And that’s another pro to working with a mortgage professional. We have access to all these different lenders, so we can take all your information, figure out where you can get e best possible scenario.

Todd Veinotte
Because that would be quite a deterrent if somebody had to stress test again, right?

Clinton Wilkins
Yeah! To have the stress test again, and for you not to be able to transfer just because of that; for me, I don’t like how that feels or looks. You know, we want to make sure that anybody who’s up for transfer, as long as they can qualify, we are going to be able to do it at a renewal situation to be able to transfer between your lender. Especially if you’re not adding any new funds. We really want to make sure that we’re going to enable you to do that. So, we’re certainly having a lot of different conversations right now. And especially for these customers that are coming up for renewal, we are seeing those customers sometimes deciding to refinance and take, either equity out, or a longer amortization. So it’s really a case by case basis right now.

Todd Veinotte
Okay. So as mentioned, we talked about the Bank of Canada.

Clinton Wilkins
I think it’s going to be a hot topic. I really thought we were going to come out of the gates guns blazing with the Bank of Canada. I know a lot of our listeners today really want to hear us talk about it, and we’re not going to let you down! We’re going to do a deep dive into what’s going on with the Bank of Canada. And, we’re also going to talk about what’s going on with the rates and the rate environment.

Todd Veinotte
Sure! Mortgage 101 your guide to homeownership. We’ll be right back!