CANADIAN GOVERNMENT MAY ALLOW 30 YEAR AMORTIZATION ON HIGH-RATIO MORTGAGES.

The Canadian Government has indicated that it wants to make home ownership more affordable for first-time buyers. All of this after being pressured by big banks who are losing money they can't lend and a fair portion of the next generation of the middle class that can't seem to get in on a piece of the real estate market. 

Perhaps the next course of action will be that they change the maximum amortization on high-ratio mortgages to 30 years instead of the current 25 years. But do this 'help' first-time home buyers or those who have less than 20% down?

This article from Better Dwelling argues that increasing the amortization does NOT, in fact, make home ownership more affordable. When you do the math, increasing the amortization simply means more interest payments and substantially more debt since the loan is now set out over 30 years as opposed to 25. Ideally, in any mortgage, we want to move to shorten the amortization so we pay less interest. 

When it comes to affordability, what increasing the amortization does do is make monthly payments smaller which makes the cost of living easier - BUT this is not to be confused with more affordable.

In reality, what the Government banks on (no pun intended) is the probability of borrowers not questioning the logistics of their policies, and that they will only be enticed by the monthly payment, therefore, inadvertently taking on massive debt to help 'fix' the eliteness system of obtaining profits. 

In my opinion, in an effort to help first-time buyers, right now, the stress-test should be eradicated and people should focus on reducing and eliminating their unsecured debt and other fruitless monthly obligations. 

https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-government-considers-move-to-load-households-with-more-real-estate-debt/#_