Earlier this month, the Bank of Canada made another jumbo rate cut of half a percentage point (0.50%) off the prime lending rate. Let's take a look at what this means for you as a current or future homeowner, as well as what this means for the state of our economy in Canada. To begin, if you have a variable rate mortgage, since June you've seen your interest rate be cut by 1.75%, which is a major drop in interest rate. To put this into context, what this means is that for every $100,000 of mortgage money that you currently owe on…

To compete for business, banks will often incentivize homeowners by offering either cash-back or cash bonuses to earn their mortgage business.

This isn’t just a way of earning business, but by dangling a carrot and getting you focused on the cash it steers the conversation away from the fine print and important features of the mortgage that could easily cost you more money in the long run.

With interest rates being the highest they’ve been in over 10 years, along with the stress test reducing what buyers qualify for this has created a number of issues for buyers attempting to find an approval for their home purchase or homeowners to complete their refinancing.

For this reason, among many others alternative financing is becoming increasingly popular as people try to find creative ways to get the job done.

Alternative financing allows current and future homeowners access to bank programs otherwise unavailable through traditional forms of financing.

Simply put, these programs are very versatile and open the door of possibilities when you keep running into rejections from your traditional lender.