Mortgage Broker in West Vancouver, BC

It depends where the price sits, and the five per cent figure people quote nationally has not applied above a $500,000 purchase price for years. The minimum is tiered: five per cent of the first $500,000, ten per cent of the portion between $500,000 and $1.5 million, and twenty per cent once the price reaches $1.5 million, because mortgage insurance is unavailable at or above that figure. On a $1.4 million Ambleside apartment the minimum is therefore $115,000 — about eight per cent, not five and not twenty. On a detached house above the ceiling it is a straight twenty per cent, and on larger or more unusual properties a number of lenders want twenty-five or thirty-five, which is lender policy rather than regulation.

Yes, and it is worth money. Above the $1.5 million ceiling a mortgage is uninsured — no insurer will stand behind it at all, and lenders price that tier accordingly. Below the ceiling, a borrower putting twenty per cent or more down is often insurable: the lender can portfolio-insure the file behind the scenes, and insurable pricing is usually better than uninsured pricing on an otherwise identical application. That matters most to anyone downsizing into an apartment under the ceiling, where landing in the right tier can be worth more than any rate negotiation.

It depends entirely on the lender. Some read your personal tax returns literally, which penalizes any owner who leaves money in the company. Others will work from corporate financials, add back reasonable non-cash expenses, or consider retained earnings. The spread between the best and worst reading of the same business can be very large, which is why the lender should be chosen after the financials are understood rather than before.

Covenants are the part worth reading. A building-envelope restriction, a geotechnical covenant or a no-build area registered against title tells a lender something specific about what can be done with the land, and that goes into the valuation as well as the approval. Rock, gradient and a watercourse on the property are ordinary here and lenders are used to them. What they dislike is discovering any of it late. Pull the title early and most of these questions are answered in an afternoon rather than becoming a condition you are racing to clear.

Usually yes, and the answer turns on your residency rather than on where the money is paid. If you are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, tax-resident here and reporting that income on a Canadian return, it can be used and the file can still be insured where the price allows — insurers care about whether income is verifiable and declared, not about the country of the payer. Where the borrower is a non-resident the position is quite different: twenty per cent is the floor, thirty-five is common, far fewer lenders participate and the documentation is heavier. Anyone who is not a citizen or permanent resident should also check their position under the federal prohibition on residential purchases by non-Canadians, which runs until the start of 2027 and carries specific exemptions.

Run both numbers, and be aware that porting down is not the same exercise as porting up. Porting keeps your existing rate, but you have to requalify with that lender, it must happen inside their permitted window between sale and purchase, and many lenders charge the penalty and refund it on completion — so the cash still has to be available in the meantime. The part that catches downsizers is that when the new mortgage is smaller than the old one, most lenders charge a prepayment penalty on the portion you are not carrying across. That can wipe out the benefit of keeping the rate. Breaking outright means paying the penalty once against potentially better terms on the whole balance. At these balances the gap between the two answers is rarely small.

You cover the difference in cash, because a lender advances against the lower of the price and the appraised value. At the top of this market that is a live risk rather than a theoretical one: a house with genuinely few equivalents gives the appraiser little to anchor to, and the figure can land under an agreed price that two competing buyers thought was reasonable. There are options — a second opinion, a different lender with a different appraisal panel, or a larger down payment — but all of them need time, which is the argument for a subject period long enough to use them.

Not on a standard residential mortgage, however large. The lender that funds it pays the commission. Private lending or a genuinely specialized structure can carry a fee, and in that case the figure is agreed with you in advance.

Yes — the City and District of North Vancouver, and out along Howe Sound to Lions Bay and Bowen Island, as well as Vancouver and the rest of Metro Vancouver. Licensed in British Columbia and Alberta.