Before you can buy a house, you need to make sure you can afford it and that there will be financing options available to you. This is where a pre-approval comes in. As mortgage lending criteria has become more strict over the years, the pre-approval and the increased certainty and confidence that goes with it has become an essential first step for the would-be-home-buyer.

Yes, a Mortgage for a Resident Doctor is Possible! 

Perhaps you have just finished university, and are now starting your medical doctor internship at the University of Calgary Foothills. Perhaps you have finished your medical residency at University of Alberta in Edmonton and starting your practice.  

It doesn't matter where you are in Canada, as a new doctor you are likely burdened with heavy student loan debt, a barrier in most cases to qualifying for a mortgage hence homeownership. Yet at the same time, after years of hard work, many young doctors are tired of renting and eager to buy their first home.

Good news for you is that there are a handful of mortgage lenders eager to extend credit to debt-burdened graduates coming out of medical school. Whether you call it a pre-practice mortgage, new doctor mortgage, a medical resident mortgage, or a resident doctor mortgage, these are special mortgages specifically designed to meet the needs of physicians just starting out. 

My phone rings, chat bubble bubbles, or my email dings ... "what's your best interest rate?" asks the caller. I scratch my head, as at this point I know nothing about my caller, the property or their needs. This article's aim is to shine a light on this question from the mortgage-lending side of the fence and delve into what it takes for a mortgage professional to be able to accurately answer your question.

Prospective homeowners may get excited by the market or the prospect of home ownership and decide that now is the right time to look into buying a home...but sometimes they get the cart before the horse and start house shopping before the have been pre-approved for a mortgage. The pre-approval process is a way for buyers to get insight on potential obstacles and learn more about what mortgage lenders want from applicants. Preparing for a mortgage loan in advance will help avoid surprises and speed a buyer's final mortgage approval when the right house is found. You'll also be taken more seriously.

Last month in my blog, I talked about new Canadian Government rules coming into effect and how they might impact the mortgage lending landscape.  Besides explaining the new mortgagequalifying stress test, I touched on CMHC’s (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) soon-to-be-gone role as a provider of “bulk” or “low-ratio” mortgage insurance to the mortgage lending industry, and how it provided stability and promoted competition. As of Nov 30^th, 2016 CMHC officially no longer provides that and certain other services, hence many mortgage lenders who had previously relied on these categories of mortgage insurance to manage their lending operations have been forced – over the last 30 days – to dramatically scale back their offerings.