Mortgage brokers are lining up to sign on with BMO, but the bank is taking it slow. A few months into its official channel launch, it's brought on just over 100 brokers.

"We're expanding that quickly," says Hassan Pirnia, Head of Personal Lending and Home Financing at BMO. He assures us the bank isn't playing hard to get with brokers. It's just trying to ensure its processes are bulletproof before ramming through big volumes.

Apart from its broker contract (which one broker called "a bear") and starting fixed rates, the buzz around BMO's offering has been upbeat.

Streetwise Mortgages broker Dalia Barsoum, for example, finds the bank's products quite "investor-friendly"—for four key reasons:

It's not every day the reverse mortgage world gets a shake-up, but Bloom Finance is about to crash the party.

After several quarters of development, the company launches its new Bloom Home Equity Prepaid Mastercard this week.

The Bloom card lets 55+ homeowners draw against their equity at will, simply by using a charge card. The product is the first of its kind in Canada—a veritable game changer that cuts interest expense while helping seniors access their home equity on demand.

The product comes from Bloom Finance, a David competing against the Goliath of the reverse mortgage business, HomeEquity Bank — as well as the #2 player, Equitable Bank.

If you're a senior who wants to tap your nest egg more cheaply and efficiently, or you're an advisor dishing out such advice, give the Bloom Card a peek. Here's why...

The First Time Home Buyer Incentive was a policy flop, and now, thankfully, it's flopping off the radar.

In a sudden change, CMHC announced that the last date for new applications to its shared-equity program is March 21. The housing agency says, "The changes do not impact homebuyers that were already approved for the FTHBI."

If you want a quick summary of our thoughts on this clown car program, the following tweet sums it up. Scroll on for the nitty-gritty.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of Canadians think home ownership is the best investment they can make, says a RE/MAX poll.

The other quarter might be too busy searching for that mythical "affordable rental" to answer.

A separate Royal LePage survey shows 56% of house hunters have put their purchase plans on ice, thanks to pesky rising interest rates. Half of these paused buyers say they'll get back in the game if (when?) rates take a dip.

Knowing that this is the prevailing psychology and that:

• inventories remain tight
• the government's supply fix is slower than molasses
• the stream of new Canadians remains non-stop
• risk assets are pricing in a "0% chance of recession," per Economist David Rosenberg...

...it takes a bold economist to predict materially falling home prices.

Those economists who do must be clairvoyant and see a future where mortgage rates make new cycle highs, joblessness skyrockets or immigration targets get slashed.

Short of such wild cards, it's hard to conjure up realistic scenarios for significantly falling values. If inflation drops to target in the next 6 to 12 months, this spring might be a golden, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, window to snag a home near today's price tags.

"Buy today or pray"

After a short-lived retirement on December 31, industry icon and former head of Scotiabank's mortgage business, John Webster, wasted no time diving headfirst back into mortgage finance.

Webster has resurrected Maple Financial, a brand he sold to Scotiabank 18 years ago, with a fresh disruptive twist.

Chatting with Webster—who we love to interview because he's heavy on IQ and light on fluff—is always a treat. In this video discussion, he provides deep insight into:

• Maple Financial's secret sauce
• The seismic shift that U.S.-style securitization might usher in for Canada's non-prime scene
• How federally-regulated competitors are at a disadvantage to Maple
• What his crystal ball says about home appreciation
• Whether eHOME and similar digital platforms are a threat to brokers
• Why other big banks don't have an eHOME challenger yet
• Current bank attitudes toward mortgage brokers
• Lessons from his years at Scotiabank
• His one regret at Scotiabank
• And much more.

Webster calls Maple Financial's model "another frontier that has not yet been discovered." Indeed, if what he says comes to pass, the company's funding approach has implications for all non-prime borrowers, brokers, private lenders, and even federally-regulated alternative lenders.

Mortgage pros are entering the thick of the most pivotal marketing disruption since the .com boom.

In his earnings report Wednesday, the CEO of AI powerhouse Nvidia, Jensen Huang, dropped a truth bomb. Generative AI has "hit the tipping point," he told Wall Street analysts. Its critical mass and widespread adoption is now reshaping consumer research and product selection habits forever.

Mortgage marketers who ignore this seismic shift—specifically those who rely on old-school online lead-gen—could find themselves in a digital prospecting desert. No one wants that. And through MLN's reporting, we'll work hard to ensure it doesn't happen to you.

As the days unfold, we'll chronicle how AIO (artificial intelligence optimization) is surmounting traditional SEO and how mortgage pros can not just survive it but cash in on it.

The truth is, the sharp cookies in the mortgage biz started thinking about this by mid-last year. For those who haven't, it's not too late. Here's a cornucopia of AI/search marketing ideas to ponder so you're ready for every spring market to come.

The climate is changing (fast) for online search

Most in the mortgage broker business saw this coming, but now it's official.

In an email to its brokers on Tuesday, HSBC Canada said that its acquirer—RBC—"will not be entering into new partnerships within the broker channel at this time."

Optimists had crossed their fingers for RBC to take a shot on brokers. After all:

We won't swing from the chandeliers just yet, but the fact is, Canada's mortgage market just got precisely what the doctor ordered—significantly better-than-expected inflation. And it came just in the nick of time, as the rate market was getting jittery.

Here's the latest CPI report card from StatsCan:

• Y/Y inflation: 2.9% (vs. 3.3% est. & 3.4% prev.)
• M/M inflation: 0.0% (vs. 0.4% est. & -0.3% prev.)
• Avg core inflation: 3.35% (vs 3.6% est. & 3.6% prev.)
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BoC rate hikes are providing much of the air that keeps inflation pumped up. Strip out mortgage interest from the calculation, and inflation is hitting the bullseye at 2%.

Looking ahead

Scotiabank Economists expected that winter homebuyers would try to snatch up homes at the lowest possible price – before expected rate cuts.

But they didn't expect it to happen this soon.

Wagering that rate cuts eventually lead to "an uptick in activity and prices" is a "reasonable bet on the part of buyers," wrote Farah Omran, Scotiabank Senior Economist, on Wednesday.

But is it?

The Liberal government's jihad against short-term rentals (STRs) is hitting landlords' wallets harder than a surprise tax audit — particularly landlords who convert their short-term rentals to long-term rentals.

Some of you may have seen this post on X:

Higher yields are spawning ominous headlines like: "Canadian Bond Yields Surge, Mortgage Costs To Climb Ahead of Spring Market."

It sounds like a cliffhanger, but the reality is less sensational. At this point, there's no clear indication that rates will shoot up enough to derail the spring market. Here's why.

Canada's 5-year yield has been on a comeback tour, giving up more than half of its downward progress since the October high. It's now surged 64 bps in six weeks, and fixed mortgage rates might finally follow suit.
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What's kicking up this dust? Inflation worries. The market crowd is losing faith in the 'next move is a rate cut' theory—or at least in the 'rate cut by summer' theory.