Episode 135 Transcript – Jessi Johnson on Global TV

Live from Global British Columbia, News Hour Final with Jill Krop.

Jill Krop: Good evening, thank you for joining us. It is not the kind of news any one with a mortgage wants to hear particularly in British Columbia. Home prices are some of the highest in the country and the Bank of Canada warned today that it may have to raise interest rates sooner than it planned.  The price you pay for gas and new cars is raising faster than anyone anticipated, as Katherine Rickheart tells us the bank’s warning could soon put the brakes on a hot housing market.

Jessi Johnson: Especially for those clients that are financial savvy and pay attention to bond bill or watched a lot of news, they know rates are going to come up. Now people often don’t forget the difference between fixed and variable rate. Now everybody hears rates going to come down, they are on the variable side but they definitely will on the fixed, so there has been a huge jumping in business.

Reporter: Mortgage Broker Jessi Johnson says potential buyers can protect themselves.

Jessi Johnson: What you can do is you can contact your broker, whomever it may be, apply for mortgage which takes 5 or 10 minutes and lock it on a rate. This protects you for 120 days and we can even do what is called look back. Even if takes six months or eight months to find a house, you get the best rate a 120 days back. That can save you five to ten thousand dollars depending on the size of the mortgage.

Reporter: It’s expected the Bank of Canada will raise rates by between half a percentage point and a full point over several months beginning in late spring or early summer. But will that put the breaks on Canada’s heart real estate market? Many economist are predicting a slow down.