Rates
Fixed vs. Variable in 2026
How to weigh predictable payments against potential savings, and what actually matters for your timeline.
Mortgage Insights
Clear answers, before the paperwork.
Qualifying
Self-Employed? Here's How Mortgage Qualifying Really Works
Business-for-self income is not a T4. A look at the lenders and documents built for real-world income.
Equity
Using Home Equity to Help Family Buy
Refinancing, gifted down payments, and co-signing: the structures parents on the North Shore use most.
Fixed vs. Variable in 2026
Rates
There's no universally right answer to fixed versus variable. It depends on your risk tolerance, your timeline, and honestly, how you sleep at night when the news talks about interest rates.
A fixed rate locks your payment for the entire term. Whatever the Bank of Canada does over the next few years, your rate doesn't move. I recommend fixed to clients who are on a tight budget, who want to know exactly what's leaving their account every month, or who just don't want to think about it. The tradeoff is that if rates drop significantly during your term, you don't benefit unless you break your mortgage, and breaking a fixed-rate mortgage early usually means an Interest Rate Differential (IRD) penalty, which can run into the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, depending on your rate, your remaining term, and how far rates have moved.
A variable rate moves with the lender's prime rate, which follows the Bank of Canada's policy rate. Depending on how your specific mortgage is structured, either your payment adjusts as rates move, or your payment stays the same and the portion going to interest versus principal shifts. Variable tends to suit borrowers who have some room in their budget to absorb a payment increase, who are comfortable with some uncertainty in exchange for potentially paying less interest over time, and who value an easier exit. Breaking a variable mortgage typically costs three months' interest, a fraction of what a fixed break can cost.
Term length matters here too. Whatever you choose only locks you in for the length of that term. Five years is the Canadian standard, but two, three, four, and seven-year terms all exist and change this math. At renewal, you're making this decision again with a fresh set of conditions.
I don't believe in a generic answer to fixed versus variable, because the right choice depends on your specific budget, your risk tolerance, and how long you plan to stay in the mortgage. That's a conversation, not a rate comparison. Happy to walk through your specific numbers.
Denise
Self-Employed? Here's How Mortgage Qualifying Really Works
Qualifying
If you're self-employed, you already know your tax return doesn't tell the whole story. You structure your finances to minimize what you owe, which is smart business, but it can work against you when a lender is trying to verify your income the traditional way. This is one of the areas I spend the most time on with clients, so here's how it actually works.
Most lenders want two to three years of Notices of Assessment (NOA) and T1 Generals if you're a sole proprietor, or two years of business NOAs and T2 Generals if you're incorporated, along with your business financial statements and typically three months of business and personal bank statements. They're looking for a consistent, or ideally growing, income pattern over that period. A single strong year usually isn't enough on its own.
Here's the part most people don't know: lenders can often “add back” certain deducted business expenses that don't reflect an actual cash outflow, things like depreciation, which can bring your qualifying income closer to what you actually take in. For incorporated business owners, dividends and deposit history can sometimes support a gross-up of your reported income as well. This is where an experienced broker earns their keep: knowing which lenders will consider add-backs and gross-ups, and how to present your file so it reflects your real earning capacity, not just your lowest taxable number.
If your income history is shorter, or your tax returns genuinely don't reflect what you earn, there are stated-income and alternative-documentation programs built specifically for business-for-self borrowers. These typically require a larger down payment (often a minimum of 10%) and mortgage default insurance through a private insurer, but they exist precisely because “self-employed” and “hard to finance” shouldn't mean the same thing.
Bring your last two to three years of NOAs and financial statements to our first conversation, and I'll tell you exactly where you stand and which lenders make sense for your file.
Denise
Using Home Equity to Help Family Buy
Equity
More families are getting creative about helping the next generation buy their first home, and home equity is usually the most efficient tool for it, but there are a few structures to understand before you commit.
The most common approach is a gifted down payment. Most lenders will only accept gift funds from immediate family (parents, grandparents, or siblings), and it needs to be documented with a signed gift letter stating the amount, the relationship, and that no repayment is expected, along with a bank statement showing the funds and a record of the transfer. Timing matters too: the funds generally need to land in the buyer's account at least a few weeks before closing, sometimes longer if the gift is coming from outside the immediate family.
If the gift is coming from your own home equity rather than savings, you have two main ways to access it. A cash-out refinance lets you pull out a lump sum, up to 80% of your home's appraised value, in a single advance. It's straightforward, but it resets your mortgage and may come with a penalty if you're breaking an existing term early. A HELOC works differently: it's revolving, capped at 65% of your home's value on its own, or up to 80% combined with an existing mortgage, and lets you draw funds as needed rather than all at once. Which one makes sense depends on whether you need the money in a single lump sum or want ongoing flexibility.
Co-signing is the other path some families take instead of, or alongside, a gift, but it's worth going in clear-eyed. A co-signer is fully responsible for the mortgage if the primary borrower can't pay, and it shows up on the co-signer's credit and debt ratios, which can affect their own ability to borrow. I always walk families through what the exit strategy looks like: usually refinancing the co-signer off once the primary borrower qualifies on their own.
There's real value in helping family into a home, and there's also a right way and a wrong way to structure it depending on your own financial picture. Let's talk through what actually fits yours.
Denise