Mortgage Papers Signed!

Funny how Scotia Bank wanted me to pay off my current balance for Amazon Visa and Capital One Mastercard.  I still had a current running balance of $61.37 from Visa and $663.22 from Mastercard that isn’t due till early-mid January 2014.  They want prove that I am able to pay this off.  Ugh, haven’t I been paying off my balance every single due date since like forever?  Begrudgingly, I complied to their request since I need the mortgage eventually… However, Scotia Bank didn’t ask me to repay my $11,800 balance transfer from MBNA Mastercard!  Woot woot, I took that out a couple months ago @ 0% and I don’t have to pay it back till September 16, 2014!  So I have ample time to repay that back.  Right now, the current balance for that is $11,564.00.  Paying it back will be a bit dicey, most likely, I’ll sell off a stock for repayment.

So I signed my mortgage papers and I’m all set to throwing money to interest payments for the next three years.  I signed a fixed 3 year rate @ 2.89% vs a 5 year variable rate @ 2.50%.  The fix rate will cost me $780 extra a year.  But it’ll give me the security of rising interest rates in the future.

RBC was offering me fixed 3 year rate @ 3.19% which is kinda crappy.  I ended up going through a mortgage broker to help me get lower rates.  Scotia Bank offered me a rate that I deemed decent enough.  They also own ING Direct, so they feel comfortable in dealing with me as I am a client of ING Direct for a number of years.  All in all, it worked out to both parties.  

Renting this out next month will be the top of my to do list.  So far, I have two potential semi-interested parties.  But the unit is on the smaller scale.  Hopefully, everything will pan out and I can get some passive income to help my mortgage payments.  

 

 

 

 

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Mortgage Interest Rates

My pre-construction condo is finishing up by December 2013.  So it is time to shop around for the best Mortgage rate!  But I am having a hard time deciding between fixed or variable rates.

I’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage from CIBC and RBC.  Apparently, both banks do not offer any variable rates for less than 5 yrs.   For comparison purposes, I’ve also added in ING rates that I got from their website.   I’ll be paying a minimum 20% of the purchase price.

	CIBC	RBC	ING
Fixed 3 yr		3.19%	3.09%
Fixed 4 yr		3.39%	3.29%
Fixed 5 yr	3.29%	3.59%	3.79%
Variable 5 yr	2.60%	2.60%	2.75%

(I still have to find out the rates from CIBC for fixed 3 yr and 4 yr rates.)

Rates are at its all time lows.  I’m kind of leaning towards the variable rate, but I might get screwed over if rates start to rise over the next few years.  A lot of people are saying to lock in your rates before it increases…

I need to find out if certain mortgages are breakable without much penalty.  Decision, decisions!

Virtual Broker – Margin Review on my Portfolio

Margin gives you the ability to buy stocks on borrowed money from the brokerage.  The more money you invest in a stock, your risk becomes greater as well.  It can be for the better or worse, but you really need to access how much you are willing to put down or stomach.  *Always be careful when borrowing money.*  

Presently, I have a margin account with Virtual Brokers.   The current rates at Virtual Brokers is 4.5% for CAD and 4.75% for USD.  Margin rates are usually competitive, since they have collateral to the amount of cash you have in the account with them.

Last month, I sold my Goldcorp stock.  So at the moment, I have $4,470.37 cash sitting in my CAD account.  I still don’t know what to buy on the Canadian side.

I also added a few American stocks to my portfolio on margin, but they haven’t been performing as well as I had hoped for.  At the moment, Currently, I have $8,384.51 margin in my USD account.  I am hoping Coke will make a turnaround soon, so I can lessen my margin load.

Current Value for USD Stocks on Margin:

Coke (KO)

2,075.99

1,912.00

-163.99

-7.90%

Visa (V)

$4,152.49

$4,052.83

-$99.66

-2.40%

Costco (COST)

2,240.99

2,292.40

+51.41

+2.29%

Anyways, I have been lazy and not really keep track of my overall stock portfolio.  Time for me to sit down one night and make a good tracking system for all my purchases and sales of stocks for 2013.