Mortgage under Work Permit
 

We are planning to move to Toronto under Work Permit (ICT) and would like some guidance if there are any banks providing mortgages for TWP holders.
Seems like HSBC can transfer your credit history from UK to Canada if you bank with them - so wondering if there are other options ? I think we may need a CMHC Insurance as well.
I understand there will be 15% Foreign buyer tax, albeit full rebate after 1 year.
Thank you.

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Categ...nada_Financial
https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Mortgages-Canada


https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/finan...cmhc-newcomers

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

I would not buy a place without first living in the area. Sorry to say. You never know and the last thing you want is moving to a new country and realizing that you a) don't like the area you live in b) don't even like the country. Depending on the market you might end up losing a huge amount of money to get rid off a place you don't like. I bought a place in an area I thought I liked (lived nearby for years) only to have the market crash and now, 5 years later (making extra mortgage payments too), I would have to pay about 20K out of my pocket to get rid of it. I am not in TO so I assume you'd be in a better position but you just never know. Rent for a year (or less) and see.

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

Prices for houses in Toronto are dropping almost as fast as they are in Vancouver, and there is no knowing how long before the upturn returns.

so probably not a good investment for the short term.

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

Kinda depends on where you are with the mortgage insurance. I have had mortgages in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta where they were not required, but in Saskatchewan the bank insisted it take the CMHC insurance despite having well in excess of the 20% deposit.


I became mortgage free last week. (Yay!!!)

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

I would also say rent first, but mainly because it's just a huge risk to take on a TWP. You're tied to your employer, so if made redundant or similar, you may have to leave the country and the house you've bought behind. I wouldn't buy until I had PR personally.

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

Re: Mortgage under Work Permit
 

The seller pays a lot of the costs of the buyer .......... so yes, expensive to sell a house especially if you have to do within a year or two of buying it and in a rush because you have to leave Canada.

In Ontario, it seems that realtor's fees range between 1-6% of the selling price, that fee is shared between the seller's realtor and the buyer's realtor . Add to that the cost of preparing the house for sale (painting, repairing, landscaping, etc), plus a pre-sale home inspection (~$500) is often recommended to identify problems that the seller can correct. Concluding the sale will include legal fees; mortgage penalty which can be thousands of $ (see the fine print in the mortgage for selling before the end of the mortgage); keeping payments for utilities etc up to date, even if only for a partial month.

Plus the prices of houses and condos are falling in Vancouver and Toronto after having reached unbelievably high levels over the last 5 or so years. It is beginning to flatten off in Vancouver particularly for lower-priced houses, but Toronto was later in to the peaking so is later in falling.

That means that people who bought within the last 5 or so years are now losing money if they have to sell .............. and that applies whether they were speculating on an investment or someone having to sell.

If you want an example of how prices rose in Vancouver, with Toronto trailing some 12-18 months behind but with the same %age increases ...................

our small 2 bedroom 70+ year old house increased in assessed value by just under $300,000 from 2015 to 2016, by over $600,000 from 2016 to 2017. The assessed value then dropped by $28,000 from 2017 to 2018, and then by just over $230,000 from 2018 to this year. The assessed value is determined in January every year here ...... and I understand that there has probably been another $100,000 or so drop since January in what we could expect to get if we sold.

The reports that I have read seem to indicate that Toronto single family house prices are somewhere around where Vancouver was in 2017 .............. the big decreases in prices might still be to come over the next 2 or 3 years.


The changes in value in our house don't bother us ............ a) we don't plan on selling soon, b) we bought the house 47 years ago, so whatever we sell for will be a huge amount more than we paid for it back then (even including the large renovation we did in the 70s). We are beginning to look at the next stage ......... where do we move when the time comes, but until then we are here.

After we sell the house will be demolished, a monster will be built in its place, and sold for much more than the house is worth right now!