Full disclosure key to a speedy mortgage

Financing a mortgage loan quickly can often make the different between a great bargain and a money pit – and what you tell your mortgage broker could be that difference.

Marianne Hobson, a broker with Dominion Lending Centres Homestead Financial in Waterdown, Ont., says the greatest challenge to working with investors is that they often don’t provide enough information when applying for a mortgage.

“Sometimes (investors) are not upfront with what they own,” she says. “They’ll either forget or they don’t disclose everything up-front sometimes, and then you find out at the last minute that they have another property.”

Hobson says investors also forget that a line of credit is secured against the property.

“In reality, that is like a mortgage,” she says, “so you need to disclose that to a lender.”

Failing to disclose these things will only extend the length of time it takes to get a mortgage. Hobson says learning of additional properties late in the game forces her to re-write the application.

“You have to fix things, re-work the application so that everything fits and everything is fully disclosed,” she says.

That can be especially problematic for those investors who have more than four doors under their belts and for whom finding a lender for that fifth mortgage can be more difficult.

“The bigger investment clients have more than four properties so they’re very hard to fit in a box with a bank because most of (the banks), and even some monolines, have a four-door policy,” she says. “So how do you get an investor his seventh property?”

CREW