One influential broker industry player is trying to make that happen.
Gary Mauris, president of Dominion Lending Centres has been hard at work educating the government about just how disastrous last October’s mortgage rule changes have been for potential home buyers.
And he hopes his efforts will lead to a reversal or, at the very least, tweaks to some of those changes.
“The hope is that the government will realize the impact and realize they made a lot of these changes without full consultation,” Mauris said. “And that they’ve made a mistake. Hopefully, around the low ratio bulk insurance restriction, hopefully they will loosen that up or reconsider that. Hopefully they will reconsider the qualifying rate and consider different standards. Something that is a little more palatable.”
The Government of Canada released a set of mortgage rule changes on October 3 of last year, including hiking the minimum qualification requirements for holders of insured mortgages as well as stipulations that make it more difficult for monoline lenders to compete with the big banks, especially when it comes to refinances.
Meaning fewer mortgage options for Canadians.
The fallout has been higher qualification standards for buyers across the country – not just in Toronto and Vancouver, which the government seemed to be targeting with the tweaks – while not cooling Canada’s hottest markets.
For his part, though Mauris is trying to make the government aware of just how wide-ranging the impact has been.
"I was asked to meet with the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. That’s on the 22 of this month. In preparation for that, it’s important to keep the heat on the government and keep sharing the stories of Canadians because many Canadians just misunderstand the impact these rules are having on them,” he said.
“What I’ve done is I’ve invited a couple different people to join me in that meeting in Vancouver on the 22. What we’re doing is we’re preparing stories from Canadians in every region; BC, Alberta, Manitoba Saskatchewan, all across the country, big cities, small cities. Communities, just sharing real life stories on how this is impacting people. Tax paying Canadians. Average Canadians.”
Mauris will be putting that feedback together in a book and providing it to all MPs, CMHC, the Bank of Canada, and the Department of Finance.
“The rules don’t make any sense,” Mauris said. “The new rules really disadvantage average Canadians who are good payers, who have good credit.
"It’s very bad policy is what it is.”
Can the recent mortgage rules be reversed?
