Canada Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Mortgages: Bank vs. broker
We're looking at getting preapproved for a mortgage and I'm looking for advice/experience with banks and brokers.
Ideally, I think we'd like to go with my bank, but my home branch isn't anywhere close to where we're looking, and we're looking in a different city than where we're currently living, so it's complicating things a bit. We're on a bit of a schedule, too, so we don't have a ton of time to shop around. Thoughts or advice?
Re: Mortgages: Bank vs. broker
We wanted a specific bank too. You don't have to get your mortgage at your home branch. Ie. our "home" branch is where DH opened his first account like 20 years ago in London, Ontario, but the branch we got our mortgage through is in Mississauga.
To get a good rate, we walked into the bank with the ING direct rate, asked for them to beat it, then we went to another bank and asked for them to beat the rate at the bank we wanted, then we took that best rate, went back to the bank we wanted and asked them to meet or beat it... and they beat it. It's not that much work. We wanted to go to a bank as opposed to through a broker so that we had favourable terms. Ie. with TD bank you can change your payments (well, increase them) at any time, up to double the payment (and you can decrease it back to the original amount). We did that basically immediately and that alone reduced our mortgage from 35 to 18 yrs. We decreased it temporarily when worried about losing our jobs, it offered good flexibility. Anyways we just were not comfortable with a broker since you can get a mortgage through any institution - we wanted one we could deal with in person and have favourable terms. good luck!!!!!
Just wanted to mention that we used a broker and all of these options are available to us as well. Actually, ours is through a bank, but the broker shopped around to get the best rate. My friend just bought a house and the process is much more comprehensive than we bought. Having a mortgage broker made it much easier for her too.
We used a broker too and they found us a rate through the bank. He was actually able to argue for us to keep our good rate. Because we had all the drama with our place and were delayed 3+ months, the bank wanted to take away our sweet rate which they'd okay'd in May, but didn't seem so good to them in Sept. Anyway, the broker fought for us so we could keep the sweet rate, so for that reason I really liked going with him.
Woo hoo house hunting!!!