I am re-financing and  so reading all I can find  and listening to anyone who will talk in order to end up with the best possible deal.

Not having heard a word from my bank (current mortgage holder), I decided to start shopping around and made an appointment with a broker recommended by my former realty company. The day before the appointment with the broker, I arrived home to find a form letter (!) from my bank telling me that I was such a valued customer that they were going to make me a special offer since it was time for me to renew my mortgage soon and they proposed a rate of 3.29% over 5 years.

The next afternoon following my mortgage broker meeting, I had a proposal of 3.24% over 5 years.

Yesterday I finally managed to speak with my bank and asked them to better 3.24%. They will get back to me on Monday.

So now I am wondering how low I can expect to go in this "battle for business" before I lock in.

Does anybody care to share their experiences?

Until then we had an adjustable mortgage with FirstLine. Based on the recommendation of our mortgage broker we renewed with FirstLine with a 2.79% 1 year convertible.

 

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Canadian Mortgage Trends

As well as the mortgage rate, make sure you find out if there are any penalties.  If you sell or for any other reason want to pay it off sooner, will there be penalties?  Is there an administration fee for setting up this mortgage?
Can you pay every second week rather than twice a month (two extra payments a year, therefore making you pay it off sooner). 
Can you make extra payments or lump sum payments that come off the principal?  How often?  I got the last mortgage paid off by making extra lump sum payments whenever I had extra cash.  Since the extra payments came off the principal, it really reduced the amount of interest.   Great way to get your debt paid off sooner.

You need to compare the small print of both mortgages.

We did the same thing as you did, approached our bank that had our mortgage and were not happy with the rate so we approached a broker.  Broker was able to get a better rate from our bank than we were.  We went back to the bank and they wouldn't budge, hopefully you do better.  We ended up moving our mortgage to a new fiancial institution.

All lending institutions are flush with money to lend out on mortgages right now.The real estate market is still strong in many areas of the country and since the values are holding,they are hungry.The top banks are getting tougher on some "less qualified" borrowers but there are plenty of other sources for those people to go to other than the big banks.

If you are happy with the bank that you do business with now,then keep pressuring them.

Mortgage brokers are definitely a good source but you do need to check the fine print of the mortgage such as the different fees involved to complete the mortgage paperwork and also the actual terms of the mortgage and any penalties that may be involved down the road.

I regret that I went against my gut in the fall and renewed my closed 5 yr mortgage, I should have gone with a variable - I really regret this decision.

It could have gone the other way.   I'm old enough to remember a mortgage we had in the seventies.  When it came up for renewal, we went for a variable.  That went from 6% to 22% in no time flat in 1980.  Scary.