Just a heads up…  One of our lenders has dropped their variable mortgage rate to prime minus .50%.  Since the prime rate is 3% at the moment, that’s a pretty awesome rate of 2.5% (at least to start)!   We haven’t seen this for a while.

The latest predictions suggest that the prime rate might stay at 3% well into 2016 – see news about this forecast by Scotiabank.

If you are in the market for a new mortgage and want to figure out if you qualify for a variable rate mortgage, you need to use the bank posted rate to do the calculation.  Every lender is required to use the greater of the posted rate or your actual rate in making your calculations.  The bank posted rate is 5.34% right now.

For some thoughts on variable versus fixed rate mortgages, click here to see my post on the topic for Clubmom.ca.   Although the mortgage rates I cited in that article are different from today’s rates – and in fact, they are constantly changing – the points I made are still worth considering.

Please feel free to get in touch and let me know what you think.   And let the mortgage rate wars begin!

Photo credit: [c] Svilen Milev for stock.xchng