About one out of every five home loans at three big Canadian banks are now negatively amortizing, which happens when years get added to the payment term of the original loan because the monthly payments are no longer enough to cover anything but the interest.
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Canada’s top banking regulator will soon implement new guidelines for the mortgage market, aimed at reducing the risks posed by negative amortization mortgages — home loans where the payment terms have ballooned by years and sometimes decades because payments are no longer enough to pay down the loan on the original terms.
This month, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions will unveil new capital adequacy guidelines for banks and mortgage insurers.
On a standard 25-year home loan, under normal circumstances, a certain percentage of the mortgage payment goes to the bank in the form of interest, while another chunk is allocated toward paying down the principal.
As things stand now, “only $23 goes to pay the capital of of my mortgage and the rest is all in interest,” he told CBC News in an interview.
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but regulatory filings from Canada’s biggest banks show negative amortized loans make up a large and growing pile of debt.
Betu is among those who thinks variable rate loans with fixed payments that lead to negative amortizations shouldn’t be allowed at all, and he hopes the new rules will crack down on them.
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