All About Mortgage Documents

Sep 22, 2022

When you apply for a mortgage there are a plethora of documents that we need to send to the lender and we need these documents at time of submission. Some of them I may already have if we did a pre-approval but know that they are only valid for 30 to 60 days prior to submission. Here is a breakdown, and quite a long one, of what you need to gather and the expectation from the lenders for when you have an offer accepted:

Income

Employed: Salary, Hourly, Commission

Letter of employment, this must confirm:
- Job title
- Income
- When you started
- Contact information for the person who wrote the letter
Your most recent pay stub

Employed: Hourly, Commission

The last two tax year’s:
- T4(s)
  - If this is at the beginning of the year and you don’t have your T4 yet, the last pay stub of the previous year will do
- Notice of Assessment (commission only)

Self-Employed

Last two tax years:
- Notice of Assessment
- Full T1 (about 45 pages)
If incorporated
- Articles of incorporation
- Last two years accountant prepared business financials or T2s
Confirmation taxes paid
GST return summary

Down Payment

We need 90 days of account history for the account(s) that your down payment is coming from
- For example if we submit on the February 10th of January we’d need as far back as November 12th
- Sometimes investment account statements are issued quarterly, if that is the case you can also screen shot a piece of your online banking that shows account activity for the missing dates
Make sure the statements/history has your name and account number on it
Something to note, if you have any large transactions on there we will need to know where the money came from, here are a couple examples
- you move $5,000 from your chequing account to your savings, we’ll need 90 days of account history for both accounts
- you sell your car for $15,000, we’ll need a bill of sale proving that you sold it for that amount
Gifted down payment is also allowed but it must come from either your parent, grandparent or sibling
- We will send you a gift letter from the lender we are going to for them to sign, this proves that it is a gift and you don’t have to pay them back
Funds coming from and RRSP for the First Time Homebuyer program are a great tax efficient way to pay for a portion or all of your down payment
- Here is a link to the CRA where you can learn more about this
- There is a form you will need to fill out when removing the funds from your bank, here it is

Solicitor

I’ll need to know which solicitor you would like to use to close the transaction, if you don’t have somebody I can point you in the right direction of some great people in town
Lenders are going to want to see proof that you have enough money in your account to pay for the closing costs, here in AB that is going to be around $1,500

Void Cheque

Void cheque or PAD form from your online banking for the account that you would like your payments to come from

Offer To Purchase & MLS Listing

Your realtor will send this to me
A note on the offer to purchase, we can’t have any hold backs on the offer. This may be the case where there is something that needs to be done to the property, for example it needs to be cleaned or it needs to have some landscaping done. Sometimes people will have a clause for the lawyer to hold back funds to cover these costs, as this affects the value of the property and the loan to value ratio lenders do not allow these clauses

If You Currently Own A Property

Confirmation of property taxes and condo fees
- Only if you are keeping the property
Current mortgage statement and confirmation of pre-payment penalty
If you own a rental property, same as above but we also need the rental agreement with your tenant