Are Portable Mortgages a Thing?

Even though Canada is right on the other side of the border, we in the United States tend not to think about it much, but there is a lot to admire about our northern neighbor. For example, Toronto has a vast network of underground walkways where you can stay warm when you don’t feel like trudging through slushy streets when the ground is covered with snow. Residents of Canada tend to pay less for healthcare than we do, and digestive biscuits are plentiful. When you go to Burger King, you can order your fries as fries, or you can order them as poutine, whereas here, the closest thing you can get to fast food poutine is if you were to take your Burger King fries home, top them with supermarket gravy and mozzarella cheese, and heat them in the microwave. Canada does not have pennies, but it has one dollar and two-dollar coins, called loonies and toonies, respectively. We could use some poutine and some toonies here in the DMV, but an abundant resource in Canada that would really help us out here is the portable mortgage. For help with the longshot pursuit of getting a portable mortgage here in D.C., or to strategize about how to make do without one, contact a Washington, D.C. real estate lawyer.

How Do You Port a Mortgage?

In a perfect world, mortgages would be portable. When you bought a new property after selling the old one where you still owed a balance on the mortgage, you could just move the mortgage to the new property. You could keep the same interest rate and the same repayment term. This is called porting a mortgage or transferring a mortgage.

Porting a mortgage is not usually the way that mortgage loans go. Normally, when you sell your house and buy a new one, you pay off your mortgage when you close on the sale. Then you take out a new mortgage to buy the new property. Your loan approval is based in part on the proceeds you can expect to get from your old property.

Yes, Portable Mortgages Exist, but Can You Get One?

Porting a mortgage would make real estate transactions so much simpler. You wouldn’t have to stress about qualifying for a mortgage at today’s unaffordable interest rates. Once you locked in an affordable mortgage interest rate, you could just carry it with you from one property to another. Unfortunately, lenders rarely offer portable mortgages in the United States, although they are common in Canada and the United Kingdom. It can’t hurt to ask prospective lenders if they will offer a portable mortgage loan, though. If you can’t get a portable mortgage, which most people here can’t, the best option for an affordable mortgage is to choose the least expensive property and place the biggest possible down payment.

Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C.

A Washington, D.C. real estate attorney can help you strategize about finding an affordable mortgage loan.  Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C.  in Washington, D.C. or call 202-362-5900.

Source:

smartasset.com/mortgage/how-does-a-mortgage-transfer-work