If you need to keep the house, call me and I do arrange real equity lending - meaning I will use the equity on your property to momentarily ease your financial status until you get back on your feet. Check with your bank as they may add additional interest on the late payments or foreclose you. You can also skip a payment at no charge (most banks offer this feature) I think once a year. Also check with your mortgage insurer if there is a plan available for you to momentarily get you out of trouble. email me - debtfree@victorcatalan.ca if you need further information.

In Canada, speak with the bank and address this issue a front. They can tell you what is needed. Why are you late in payments ? If this is a temporary circumstance, email me and I will see if we can help you get back on your feet.

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I just received my very first credit report/score from transunion. my current score is 680. i did have 3 late payments in 4

680 will qualify you for a decent rate (anything over 660). However you need to check all three credit bureaus, because the bank uses the middle score of the three - it throws out the high and the low. The other things in consideration - Loan to Value (you have 25% down so that's fine), and income to debt - which for the house should be no more than 25-33% and total non-mortgage income to debt - which should be no more than 25% or so. The idea is that for all your debt together (including home), you should not be spending more than 50% of your monthly income. Get the home loan first, then the car loan. If you do it the other way around, you may not qualify for the house becuase of above. Once you have the house, the auto finance companies will give you a car with little regard for the ratios - because you are a homeowner (as long as your credit stays OK - above 620).

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I bought a home 3 years ago using the 0 down program that doesn't exist anymore...anyway, i've come to the end of my originally arranged 3 year term on a 25 yr amortization with a company called xceed here in ontario. three years ago xceed did their own mortgage insurance but now are no longer allowed so i need to refinance using genworth or cmhc or aig but none of them will approve me. so what's happened is my mortgage is currently on hold while the mortgage broker is frantically attempting to find me a mortgage somehow without killing me with a unrealistic interest rate...but it doesn't seem to be happening. my credit is good and i have never ever missed a mortgage payment...i'm just in limbo right now. has anyone else had this problem? what did you do? does anyone know of any other avenues i can take? this crunch is killing me and i do not want to lose my home! p.s i have 83% ltv right now.

Lisa: Try posting your question in the Mortgages forum below. Good Luck! Bob

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I have nearly $45,000 in equity in my first property. about $30, 000 in bad dept. i live in ontario, canada.

I'm a mortgage broker from Edmonton, Alberta. It's kind of difficult to anwser your question without more details. You state that you want a downpayment for a 3rd property. here's what i would usually want to know: 1) What Loan to Value do you have in your properties? 2) What is your credit like? 3) Is the bad debt credit cards/store cards? 4) Do you have provable income? 5) How much of a downpayment are you looking for? 6) What is the new revenue property? I could go on but you can see it's not that simple. One thing is there's a stated income line of credit available up to 80% LTV, with 1% minimum payment on the balance. this can be registered as a 2nd but doesn't have 2nd interest rates.

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Our credit is not great... but we're working on it. my score is currently 502... i have a secure credit card ($300 limit) that i've had for 1 1/2 months now.. 1st payment already made (full bill - early payment) all current bills paid on time, a bunch of inquiries will be falling off at the end of june. we both work full time - same jobs for several years, make about $105,000/yr cdn we're in southwestern ontario. looking for a house around the $175 - 215,000 zone. my question is.... 1: i know each inquiry takes off 6 points, does that mean when the inquiries fall off, i will get 6 points back for each one? there are several. 2: can i get a mortgage by september with the above circumstances. (i know it might be at a higher interest rate, and am willing to pay it) we're paying $1200/mo in rent, and can easily get a house in our area at that price, even with a high interest rate. 3: if i can get a mortgage at a high rate, who do i need to talk to? thanks! we can come up with a 5% down payment, but not more than that.

As you figured a 502 score is not great, ideally you need to be at a minimum of a 620-650. Anything under a 620 is considered Sub-Prime. The Sub-Prime rates will be much higher and you will be required to have higher down payments. So I don't think a 5% down would be enough in your case. Also, you don't say how much above the $1200 you can afford but the higher interest rate can add quite a bit. For example a 30 yr loan for 200,000: @6.00% interest that is a monthly payment of 1199.10 @7.00% 1330.60 @8.00% 1467.53 @9.00% 1609.25 With your current score you would probably be in the 8-9%+ range. Each inquiry does not have a set value. Also, if you say they are going to fall off I am thinking these are almost 2 years old. If so, they are having no effect on your score currently. After 6 months inquiries have a minor effect on your score, after a year they are ignored. Even though they will continue to show up on your report for 2 years in total. You need to find out why your score is so low. If it is just because of a short history(1 payment 1 time) only time will fix that. Getting an additional credit card or applying a car loan and paying them on time will help quite a bit. If it is because you have collection or past due accounts you need to take care of those first. Payment history is a major part of the scoring and the only things worse than a collection account is a Repo or bankruptcy.

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Our credit is not great... but we're working on it. my score is currently 502... i have a secure credit card ($300 limit) that i've had for 1 1/2 months now.. 1st payment already made (full bill - early payment) all current bills paid on time, a bunch of inquiries will be falling off at the end of june. we both work full time - same jobs for several years, make about $105,000/yr cdn we're in southwestern ontario. looking for a house around the $175 - 215,000 zone. my question is.... 1: i know each inquiry takes off 6 points, does that mean when the inquiries fall off, i will get 6 points back for each one? there are several. 2: can i get a mortgage by september with the above circumstances. (i know it might be at a higher interest rate, and am willing to pay it) we're paying $1200/mo in rent, and can easily get a house in our area at that price, even with a high interest rate. 3: if i can get a mortgage at a high rate, who do i need to talk to? thanks! we can come up with a 5% down payment, but no more than that.

With a 502 score you will need a hefty down payment to get a home and your interest rate will be quite high. You may need 20% down and the rate may be 10% on a 30-yr mortgage(compared to 0% down and 6.25% with a 620 score). It sounds like you earn enough $$$ so your debt ratio will be fine. I would look into how much your credit scores improve by September and if they are in the mid to upper 500's I would wait until next spring to buy a home. Higher scores will save you $1,000's in interest. Whoever told you about the 6 points deal is merely guessing. Too many other factors go into your credit report for anyone to know exactly how many points are added or subtracted from your scores. I work directly with the bureaus and they have all told me there is no way to tell how many points you will earn or lose based upon the various actions on a credit report (like inquiries, payments, missed payments, etc.). A computer digests all the info and spits out a score. Sad but true. And no, you don't get points back after an inquiry drops off. You get points for: making payments on time, having diverse credit, not having open collections or judgements, not having repossessions or bankruptcies (or moving further away from when those things happened), and several other factors.

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Firstly, i live in ontario canada, so this deals with the canadian banking system. my husband and i currently have a line of credit worth $25,000 at 4.55% interest. we have a closed mortgage worth $165,000 with a term of 5 years @ 5.3% interest and an ammortization period of 25 years (we are doing accelerated weekly payments, so our mortgage can be paid off sooner). our mortgage does not come up for renewal until june 2011. it is forecasted that interest rates are going to start climbing again, likely beginning this summer...they won't climb quickly, but will start to again. at this time, we are aggressively paying down our line of credit and we expect to have it down to $10,000 by the time our mortgage is up for renewal next year. we were talking to an account manager last night, and what they recommended was that we take our line of credit, put it on our mortgage, switch to a variable rate mortgage for 5 years (so our rate would go down to prime, which is currently at 2.25%), and take the additional penalty of about $5,000 for ending the term early on the closed mortgage. the way they explained it to us was that our mortgage payments would go up slightly, but we'd be paying off so much more interest, so the penalty would be worth it to take. if we took a closed variable rate mortgage for 5 years, we'd pay whatever bank of canada prime was. if we took an open variable rate, we'd pay prime + .70%, but could easily get out of the term if we wanted to with no penalty. we're not sure what to do. is it worth it to consolodate and put our line of credit on our mortgage + take the penalty? or should we just continue chisling away at the line of credit, wait until our mortgage is up for renewal and then take a variable rate mortgage (assuming prime is still pretty low). i hope i explained it all okay, thanks for the advice in advance.

If I understand correctly, you're about 4 years into a 30 year mortgage. Several points come to mind. The first is that the only way to make a good judgment is to take ALL the costs with switching mortgages, ie the penalty for closing the first mortgage as well as all the costs for the new mortgage, which will be in the range of 3-5K, make some guesses as far as interest rates and see how the costs compare. You don't say what your current mortgage could go to, ie +2% every 5 years, etc; this will have a bearing. If you do make a switch, why aren't you considering a 15 yr mortgage? Your payments go up by 15-20%, but you pay off the mortgage in half the time. In the same vein, while paying of your line of credit is good, your mortgage is at a higher rate, I would put most of the extra money toward it. Print out an amortization schedule and look at where you are on the mortgage and see how many months you can knock off the mortgage by prepaying on it. (Look at the principal column, so for every $ extra, it makes a big difference as at that point in your mortgage, for every $1K regular payment, $100-150 is going to principal. So if you dump in $1K extra, you just shortened the mortgage by 8-10 months.

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Here's the situation: my husband and i currently have a primary residence in north dakota which we have a mortgage on (monthly payment is $823). we plan to retire in 15 years. for the past year we have been looking at property for sale with or without a residence on it to have set up as our primary residence in retirement. this last week we found it. its perfect, everything we want for our family, upstate new york, 5 acres, stream, surrounded by apple & peach orchards, 1/4 from lake ontario, across the street from a state park, 15 minutes from amish country, huge barn, etc. currently there are renters in the property and it is for sale by owner. the property is selling for $155k and the current owners bought it for $145k 3 years ago. we believe it is reasonably priced. our credit score is between 760-770 and have a low debt ratio (no car payments, no credit debt, one small 3 year loan under 7k that we got for our parents to consolidate their loans and they pay on time.) i think we have formed a good repore with the sellers. this is their second home as well, they live out of state. i have talked to a handful of banks and we are definitely preapproved. the down fall is that they are considering this an investment property because there are currently renters in the home whom we have agreed that they will stay for no longer than a year, then becoming our vacation home until we can retire there. is there anyway around this "investment" classification that the lenders are calling it. for 14 out of the 15 years it will be a vacation home until we can make it our primary residence. with the lenders classification the lending falls under more strict rules. for example we will have to have 20% down, plus closing costs, totaling about 42k due at closing. that's a lot of money! but we want to get in now because i know as we speak mortgage lending practices are tightening and new rules are being put into place. with this and inflation we want to get in now before it will cost us even more money. our plan would be to have it paid off by the time we retire. please anyone with any ideas/advice would be helpful. we are open to non-traditional ideas like "assuming a loan" or the like. here is what we have been given by the banks thus far: 30 year fixed pay 2 points 6.625 interest rate 20 % down payment around $1070 a month thanks in advance. i would like to add a few more details and thank you to all who have helped in answering my question thus far. the current owners own the house in full, so there is no mortgage. also, i know they want to sell this house so they can use the money from equity for their new house. we haven't put in an offer yet but they have already told us they are firm on the price, 155k and that they have already reduced it by 15k. i do believe it is a great deal at 155k. hope these minor details help. keep coming with the good advice.

There is absolutely no way. You can not rent out a "second home", it has to be vacant when you are not there. You can buy it now as an investment, and refinance it later when you no have tenants.

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I purchased an un-built condo 3 years ago in toronto, it was very slow to be built so i saved enough to put 10% down on a house (already putting 12.5% down on the condo) and purchased the house 8 months ago. turns out now the condo will be ready in about 6 months. i will need to sell it or rent it out as soon as it's done since my wife and i won't be able to carry 2 mortgages too easily. i need to know what the waiting period is before i can rent or sell, and how much more of a down payment i'll have to put on the condo, will this affect my house's down payment? i've heard 25% down! hope i don't have to put that on my house too!! any help would be awesome!

I'm a bit confused. Have you bought the house or not? In any event the 25% that you've heard likely refers to the amount one has to have as a downpayment to avoid mortgage insurance (google CMHC). Actually it is now 20%. If you have already bought your house, that is a done deal and if you had to have the mortgage insurance it has been folded into your mortgage. As for the condo - that depends on the terms of your contract with the developer and the condo's rules (if there are any yet). Sometimes the developer has terms in a contract that prevent selling rights to the agreement of purchase, and CMHC certainly frowns on it after speculators cost a lot in the 80's. I suspect that you have no cause for worry. In fact I think you are sitting pretty. Given the increase in values you can likely sell your condo for more than you agreed to pay shortly after it is available for occupancy. Renting might work for you, but remember it has to cover the mortgage, maintainence fees, taxes, and repairs. Add all that up, and then add 10% for vacant times and advertising etc. If it works - consider renting.

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I live in edmonton, alberta, canada.i make $60000/year. take home income/month is like $3200. i pay for the car ($407/month),i pay for gas $200, insurance $85, this car has to be sold and divided equally. i own an apt in ontario (it is rented out for $900- so total monthly net income $4100. it has to be sold and divided equally) and i pay extra $200 on top of rent for mortgage and mantainance. i pay $400 for interest on the loan which is in my name but was used for family expenses.i pay $825 for my apt rent in edmonton.i pay $866 for two kids (7 and 2), $96 for child care, $300 for spousal support. lawyer fee goes from credit card so i pay minimum payment of cards ($100), i have paid over $5000 to lawyer already. after all expenses $621 is left. i have not included my expenses like eating, cigrets, laundry, etc. my credit card balance is building up day by day. my ex-wife works part time two places, dental office where she makes $20/hr for7 hours 3 days a week (about $1400 as dental assistant after tax/month)(she works intentionally part time here i think) and a&w two days/week where she makes (minimum net$500/month). she probably gets about $700 or more from gov for universal and ctbt.$1262 form support payments. so according to my calculation her net income is $3862. after all expenses she probably saves $20000/ month. she got financial aid from gov so did not pay much to lawyer. there is no loan on her as i paid all her credit cards when in marriage. now, my question to all readers is: is she entitled to $300 spousal support what judge ordered without looking my expenses. it has been 7 months since we separated. she asking for my share for her computer repair expenses and my lawyer says that i must pay it. and i say why? is she entitled to spousal support ? should i change lawyer? is gov support for kids considered income in this case? please help i am in deep pain. she pays $1200/month including electric, cable tv. may be $40 for cellphone, $35 for laundry, max $500 for grocery because she cooks home, she used to buy a bus card for $60. medical is provided by my company to all of them. she recently baught a car. these are her details, i did not forced her not to work, she could work in a call center but i supported her to go school and take a dental assistant course. $1200 (is apt rent) here in canada, child support is according to non custodial parent's salary, here in alberta for two kids is $866 child support, its like cast on stone. no one can change it, unless i am able to take more than 40% custody and kids start living with me some of time.

You neglected to mention how much her rent/mortgage is, How much she spends on food and clothes for her and your children, vehicle expenses. Medical bills (if this applies) utilities, phone, insurance and anything. once you calculate what she has left over i could answer weather she deserves $ 300 dollars from you.

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About one year ago i jointly purchased a property in ontario for 370,000, i made 10% down payment at the time of purchase and obtained fixed loan of 3.5 for three years. after 3 months of purchase i had an accident leaving me with a fractured leg; jobless. i am unable to pay 50% of my monthly mortgage. my friend too is not in a financially sound position. the mortgage is now taken care by the rents from letting out rooms to tenants, but occupancy is not always full therefore we end up paying from our own pockets at the end of the month. when i tried to sell the property by listing it i learned for the first time that i purchased a property which was listed for 5 months at a asking price of 310,000/- and i was lured into buying the property much higher then the market price so now it is hard to sell even at the purchase price. i do not have the finances to improve the condition of the house to get an attractive offer. my friend tells me to take off the property from listing as it tends to devalue the price if it is on the listing for a long time. according to him such properties are only purchased by investors we need to search search buyer without listing it. i feel ripped off by my property agent who happened to have sold the property of his boss's first cousin doing him a favor. i am planning to further my studies by taking admission in the university and looking forward to take osap government loan to finance my studies. i want to ask how can i get out of this situation? and continue with my studies and find a job to support my family. to what extent the mortgage co. go after me for recovery if i fail to pay the mortgage? will they get after my joint locker which i maintain with my partner? will i be jailed for default? now what are my options? how do i get out of this mess .. clean?

I would go talk to a lawyer. It sounds like your agent held back important information from you when you purchased the property. If the agent double-ended the sale, represented both the buyer and the seller, it think you might have a strong case of constructive fraud against the agent.