Others expected to follow Canada’s largest bank with lower rates
CBC News
Canada’s largest bank is lowering its five-year fixed mortgage rate, the second reduction this month.
RBC Royal Bank says the posted rate for five-year mortgages will be reduced by about one-10th of a percentage point to 5.99 per cent, effective Friday. Later in the day, Toronto-Dominion bank announced it, too, was cutting its benchmark five-year rate to 5.99.
Banks routinely discount from their posted rate, but other banks are expected to follow suit.
RBC’s rate started the month at 6.25 per cent, but it was lowered by 15 basis points on May 11 along with a range of other rate cuts. A basis point is one 100th of a percentage point. Prior to this month, Canadian mortgage rates had been on the rise.
Variable-rate and fixed-rate mortgages can often move in opposite directions. Most lenders are still offering variable-rate mortgages under two per cent. That’s because those rates are directly tied to the Bank of Canada’s lending rate, which currently sits at 0.25 per cent.
Fixed-rate mortgages, however, are less based on the central bank’s rate, and are more dependent on the bond market, where lenders sell bonds to raise money to lend to prospective home-buyers.
Responding to higher costs to borrow on the bond market, the big banks moved to raise their fixed-rate interest rates, peaking at 6.1 per cent in April. The Greek debt crisis, however, has brought those costs back down for Canadian banks, which led to the rate drop.
The fixed-rate change is also significant because under new mortgage rules in place since April 19, borrowers must qualify for a bank’s posted, five-year fixed rate mortgage, no matter what the term and nature of mortgage they end up choosing.