Who wouldn't want a custom home.
It's a house with all your favorite things. The walls are the right color, the flooring matches perfectly, and the layout fits your needs exactly. Building a custom home is the dream of many Canadians. Unfortunately, while building a house is pretty complex, getting a construction mortgage is just about as complex of a process.
No worries, we do millions of them a year!
No seriously, Tekamar brokers over 10 million in construction mortgages each year. We're darn good at it. The reason we're able to do about 10 times our competitors? Simple, while we are a construction mortgage broker (we take your deals to other lenders) we're also a construction mortgage lender. Tekamar Mortgages has an in-house Mortgage Investment Corporation called Tekfund. It's like a small, private bank. Oh, and it just so happens Tekfund specializes in Construction mortgages in the BC interior.
What's the process like?
We like to be honest and straightforward - it's how we've made it this long. The truth is, construction mortgages are more demanding than a normal purchase mortgage. The first step is starting the conversation around money. From there, your broker will give you budgets and numbers that you can start working with builders (or realtors if you're still looking for land). The reality is there's a lot of moving pieces and the sooner you speak with a broker, the more you can save in unnecessarily paying for things twice as you go.
Need to know?
Construction mortgages are by their nature, unique. Custom homes are all, well, custom, so the mortgage has to be as well. That said, before you deep dive into picking your cabinets, here's a couple things you should probably know:
- Build mortgages require fairly substantial down payment
- Often you need from 25 to 40% of the cost to build (not the final value) - part of this can come from the land if you already own it.
- Interest rates are 2-5% higher on funds during the build
- Afte the build completes, the construction mortgage rolls into a regular - and regularly priced - mortgage
- The timelines are different
- A construction mortgage can often take a while to prepare, but once registered, sometimes you can receive money (draws) within hours of asking.