The Good & Bad of Rent to Own/Lease to Own

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Leah Coss

I wanted to talk about the good and the bad sides to lease to own homes. Lease to own is also called LTO, RTO, rent to own, lease to own. But essentially what you’re doing is you are leasing to own a home much like you lease to own a car. The good sides of lease to own I’ve gone through in a lot of my other videos.

The great side to it is, if you can’t buy today for any reason, such as bad credit, you don’t have enough down payment, you have too much debt compared to your income ratio. Maybe you just started your Continue reading →

Can I Get a 35-40 Year Amortization?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Leah Coss

We’re at 2011 right now and it wasn’t that long ago that you were able to get a 40 year amortization. Then it got cut down to 35 years. From there it’s now being cut down to 30 years, but I still get the question all the time, “Can I get higher than a 30 year amortization? I heard a rumour that I can.” The quick answer to this is yes, it is possible to get a higher than 30 year amortization for a mortgage, but the other part to that is it is not available at every lender. There is some Continue reading →

How Much is Property Transfer Tax? PPT

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi every one, it’s Leah Coss with the Mortgage Centre and I want to talk about Property Transfer Tax, because there are lot of people who are confused about what it is, why they have to pay, when they don’t have to pay it, how much to pay and things on that nature. I’m just going to quickly run through on the generalities of Property Transfer Tax here in British Columbia, Canada.

Property Transfer Tax, how much do you have to pay? Well, it’s one percent of the first 200,000, so two grand, and two percent of every hundred thousand after that. If you’re buying a $400,000 place, that’s $6,000 if you do the math, OK? So, a bit of a chunk of cash for some of you. When do you not have to pay it? Never. You always have to pay it unless Continue reading →

How to Buy a House/Property in Another Province

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi, everyone, it’s Leah Coss with the Mortgage Center. And I wanted to talk really quickly about buying out a province here in Canada. Maybe you’re looking to buy a second home in a different province, maybe you’re looking to get a rental property somewhere else. If you’re going to do that, I just need to let you know, so that you’ve got some expectations set. Chances are, you’re going to need two lawyers, which means two lawyer bills, when you’re closing that deal.

The reason being is that if you’re buying, say you live in BC and you’re buying in Ontario, you’ll need a lawyer there in Ontario to do all the title stuff, the title swapping, all the land transfer stuff, and whatever the Continue reading →

Unauthorized (Illegal) Basement Suites – City Inspections

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Leah Coss

I want to talk about unauthorized basement suites. I had a call from a client he found me online and they were asking, “Hey, the city has called me” or written a letter or however they communicated with him, “and said, we’re coming by. We’re coming by on this date and we’re going to be inspecting your home.” Now, he was like, “I’m not really sure why they’re coming by,” but he had a sneaky suspicion it’s probably because he has an unauthorized suite in his home.

Now, what is an unauthorized suite? Simply that. The suite is not registered Continue reading →

Job Letter Requirements – Mortgage Lender Conditions

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi, everyone. It’s Leah Coss with the Mortgage Center. I want to talk about income verification, most specifically, your job letter. I will even get into a little bit on pay stubs. Now, for those of you who are standardly employed meaning that you are de salary, or full time hourly. Something where in your situation, lenders most likely just going to ask for a pay or your most last two most recent pay stubs and a job letter. I want to make sure that you are in fact getting the right type of paperwork with all of the information on it that you need, especially for those of you who are in like mom and pop type companies where it’s just you and some other person. Or they don’t have a payroll company doing the payroll for you. Here’s what the lender Continue reading →

When Are Appraisals Required When Buying a Home?

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Leah Coss

I’m going to talk about appraisals because I always get so much pushback when I tell somebody that they’re going to need an appraisal. Now, usually if you tell me all the details of your situation before we even find the house that you’re going to make an offer on, I can tell you the likelihood of whether you’ll need an appraisal or not because there’s very specific situations to that.
But, let’s go through that so that you have those expectations and you will know if you’re going to have to get an appraisal ahead of time because knowing that Continue reading →

How to Avoid or Reduce CMHC Fees (Mortgage Insurance)

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi, everyone. It’s Leah Coss with The Mortgage Center and I wanted to talk about CMHC fees also known as Genworth fees, AIG fees, Canadian Guarantee fees. Kind of list all the companies that are out there that do insurance but it’s also called mortgage insurance. Now in this blog, I’m not getting into exactly what mortgage insurance is. I can give you kind of the quote notes which is this is mortgage insurance set. It is mandate by the government that you pay if you put less than Continue reading →

What is the Difference Between Mortgage Brokers?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi everyone, it’s Leah Coss with The Mortgage Center. I wanted to talk about the differences potentially between one mortgage broker and another because this is somewhat a question, especially people who have been jaded in the past because they’ve used a mortgage broker and they weren’t happy with it or something like that. Well, obviously, yes, there is going to be differences between mortgage brokers, and the obvious one is some of them you are going to like and some of them you’re not, much like there’s a difference between two realtors, there’s a difference between two plumbers, there’s a difference between Continue reading →

How to Use Inheritance Money to Get a Mortgage?

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Leah Coss

Hi everyone, it’s Leah Coss with The Mortgage Center. I wanted to talk about inheritance and whether you can use that money that you’re getting from inheritance to obtain a mortgage.

Now there’s two ways that people will get an inheritance. One is in a lump sum, where they’re going to get a lump sum and they’re going to use Continue reading →