Leah Zlatkin quoted in CMP Magazine: ‘Is Canada’s Borrowing Landscape Set For Dramatic Change?’

Is Canada’s borrowing landscape set for dramatic change?

Leah Zlatkin (pictured top), a licensed broker and LowestRates.ca expert, told Canadian Mortgage Professional that those rising costs will likely be compounded by inflation, which has recently ballooned to levels not seen in over 30 years in Canada.

“For people who are looking to do a fixed-rate mortgage, qualifications are starting to get more challenging. For people doing a variable rate mortgage, we see rate hikes coming,” she said. “I think it’s time to brace and get ready to pay a little bit more on your mortgage payments.

“If it was mortgage payments alone that we’re bracing for, [that’s] not such a big deal. But the fact is, inflation is getting a little crazy. We’ve got grocery prices, we’ve got gas prices, we’ve got all this stuff that’s going up.”

In that landscape, borrowers will need to be extra careful as they weigh up their options ahead of deciding to take the plunge into the homebuying process, Zlatkin said, with housing market conditions potentially set to look a lot different than they did a matter of weeks ago.

“People need to think very seriously about what they’re doing and whether they can afford to take on a new mortgage, or whether they can afford to do the refinance they want to do before they start investing into it,” she said.

“For many Canadians, everybody’s sitting where they’re at – and it just means that people might not be able to shop around as much.”