MLN NewsStream

The government just unfurled guidelines for its newest mortgage policy brainchild, 30-year insured amortizations. These extended repayment periods are earmarked for first-time purchasers of newly-built residences and kick off this August.

Here's what mortgage pros need to know:

Toronto-based mortgage broker 8Twelve Mortgage Corporation has just scored a lucrative long-term revenue-sharing pact with NerdWallet (Nasdaq: NRDS).

San Francisco-based NerdWallet is a global financial information juggernaut. In Canada, it competes against Ratehub, Wowa, and countless others to deliver rate comparisons and advice to mortgage consumers. Its global revenue last year reached almost $600 million USD.

Since touching down in Canada in 2021, NerdWallet has been climbing Google’s mortgage search ranks faster than a squirrel climbs a tree. And that's just the beginning, the company promises.

To unpack this strategic alliance, MLN talked with 8Twelve CEO and Co-Founder Gary Fooks, who dished out several business plan nuggets.

When the public thinks about where to get a mortgage, MCAN doesn’t pop up on most radars. However, for status brokers in the know, MCAN is sometimes invaluable for ultra-rate-sensitive insured clients. It also fills some quirky non-prime niches.

And then there's its stock. Investors know MCAN Financial for its irresistible dividend (almost 10%), payout track record and 12.39% ten-year compound annual growth rate. MCAN is also Canada's largest Mortgage Investment Corporation ("MIC") and the only federally regulated MIC.

MCAN Home, the company's residential lending arm, squeezed out $940 million in originations last year. That's small fries in the grand scheme of things. Yet, given its 10% annual growth ambition, the company seems poised to climb the lender rankings.

MLN recently grabbed a moment with MCAN Financial CEO Don Coulter and COO Avish Buck. We asked a bunch of questions we thought brokers and investors might want to know (including about that fat dividend.)

In the video chat below, the two unpack:

• How falling rates juice up mortgage demand
• OSFI's new LTI limits
• Sustainability of MCAN's low-rate model
• How MCAN's direct-to-consumer deposit model is faring
• Don Coulter's thoughts on going direct-to-consumer with mortgages
• MCAN mortgage niches
• Securing uninsured prime funding
• Why MCAN's dividend yield is stuck in the juicy 9% to 10% range.

Catch the full interview here...

CMHC has massively undercut private default insurers on 30-year insured amortizations.

Effective August 1, Canada's housing agency will be charging just 20 bps extra for insured first-time buyers who want a 30-year am. That's dialling all the way back to what CMHC charged in 2012, the last time it offered insured 30-year amortizations on residential loans.

Canadian borrowers will be toasting the BoC from coast to coast, having waited for this day since the first hike 27 months ago.

Odds are, today's 25 bps cut is just the appetizer. The Bank expects it to start a string of easing—one that markets anticipate will last about 200 bps.

Even though some naysayers called recent economic data "inconclusive," BoC chief Tiff Macklem couldn't ignore the red warning lights on his economic dashboard, nor (at least subconsciously) public cries for rate relief. Ultimately, the Bank trimmed rates to dodge an even bigger economic iceberg that's already on the horizon.

Even as the target rate dips to 4.75%, the shackles are by no means off. Rates are still tightly restrictive. Canada's policy rate remains 200 bps above average core inflation. The 20-year average is 45 bps below inflation, almost two and a half points lower.

Where we go from here