Its worth the time and energy to shop around for a great mortgage rate.
This is something my husband and I haven't done in the past, and I believe we have "paid" (literally) for it.
With our mortgage renewal coming up in April and with wanting to max out our RRSP, the timing to shop around was due.
We had started back in the fall and was prepared to payout an early penalty believing that in the end that the difference in the percent that we would get with a new mortgage was worth the three month interest cost.
We were determined to get a rate below prime (3%) and the only way we could do this was to go variable. But after researching mortgage articles it became clear that the difference between fixed and variable were not worth the risk. Plus, honestly we just aren't comfortable with variable.
Thankfully this worked in our favour. The new year brought about BMO's 2.99% FIXED 5 year mortgage. We could not believe our luck. We quickly jumped at it knowing that we would have to pay the penalty to pay out our current mortgage 3 months early. But this we could justify. Right?
The rate was good until nine days before our mortgage was to mature. NINE days! Would the bank be willing to extend it for nine days and save us about $3500 dollars? You only have to ask right?
The worse they can say is no....Well, we walked away with smiles on our faces with no fees to pay and more money to put towards our TFSA and RRSP's!
Sometimes all you have to do is ask.
