A client of ours recently wrote about their experience for others to benefit:
“For us, dealing with someone we trusted who had extensive experience in the mortgage lending field was a necessity. Having worked in financial services for a while, I'm lucky to know a few good mortgage brokers, however if you don't have anyone in your network that you would like to work with then ask friends and co-workers for referrals. Whether it's your first mortgage, a renewal or a re-finance you want to make sure that the person you're dealing with is reliable, will respond promptly to your emails or phone calls and will take the time to answer any questions you might have.
Our mortgage broker had over a decade of experience and was able to give us good advice and information about the best way to structure our mortgage. Additionally, because our house is on quite a large area of land, he was able to guide us through the grey areas surrounding financing a rural property. Before talking to him, we didn't know that, if you purchase a larger acreage rural property with a residential mortgage, the mortgage lender bases the mortgage amount on the appraised value of the house plus a certain acreage of land, not all of the land. If the property has more than a certain acerage of land (like ours) then the purchaser is responsible for covering any difference between the purchase price and the appraised value. This was something our realtor wasn't aware of and it could have caused us major issues if we hadn't known about it going into the negotiation process.
Personally, I like dealing with mortgage brokers because they work with a variety of lenders and they can often offer guidance when it comes to selecting the one whose mortgage product best suits your needs. Even if your preference is to get your mortgage from the bank, you can often get a better mortgage rate from the bank by going through a broker than you can by going directly to the bank itself. This makes a broker a good place to start your mortgage rate research.â€