Private Mortgages & Bridge Financing

Private mortgage lending in Ontario is not a single market. It is roughly four overlapping pools of money: individual (MIC-adjacent) lenders writing $100K–$400K seconds behind an insured first, mid-sized mortgage investment corporations funding $300K–$1.5M firsts on urban residential, family offices that will look at rural acreage or mixed-use where institutions will not, and short-term bridge desks that price on the exit rather than the borrower. Where your file lands decides your rate far more than your credit score does — a 620 beacon on a Burlington semi at 62% loan-to-value prices better than an 760 beacon on a Northern Ontario hobby farm at 70%.

Cost is the part borrowers consistently misread. A private mortgage has four cost lines: the interest rate, the lender fee (usually 1%–3% of the loan, deducted at funding), the brokerage fee, and the legal and appraisal costs. Comparing two quotes on rate alone is how borrowers end up paying more — a 9.99% offer with a 3% lender fee on a 12-month term costs more than a 10.99% offer with a 1% fee. We quote every file as an all-in annualized cost of borrowing so the comparison is honest, and the Form 1.1 disclosure you sign shows the same numbers.

Every private mortgage should be written backwards from its exit. Before we submit, we agree on which of the three doors you are walking through in 12 months: refinance to a B lender once bruised credit or arrears have seasoned, refinance to an A lender once two years of self-employed income are filed, or sell. Files that fail in private lending almost never fail because the rate was high; they fail because nobody planned the exit and the borrower arrives at maturity with the same problem they started with, paying a renewal fee to stay put.