Mortgage Broker in Brampton

One land transfer tax, and a rebate for first-time buyers

Toronto is the only municipality in Ontario that charges its own land transfer tax. Brampton does not, so you pay the provincial tax alone. Since land transfer tax comes out of cash at closing and cannot be added to the mortgage, that is a genuine difference rather than a technicality.

First-time buyers can claim up to $4,000 of the provincial tax back, applied by your lawyer on closing. Tell them early. It is far simpler as a credit at closing than a refund chased afterwards.

Budget for the rest of it as well: legal fees, title insurance, the adjustments and, on a new build, whatever the builder is entitled to pass along under the agreement. We put all of it into the numbers from the start.

Basement apartments, and why registration matters

A legal second unit changes a Brampton application more than almost anything else, because it works on both sides of the ledger. It produces rent, and lenders will generally count some of that rent when they qualify you.

Brampton requires second units to be registered with the City. That means a building permit, an Electrical Safety Authority inspection confirming the panel and wiring can carry a second kitchen and laundry, and City inspections before a Certificate of Occupancy is issued and the unit is added to the public register of legal two unit dwellings.

Lenders care about that status. A registered unit with a lease is straightforward to use. Unregistered rent is a different conversation: some lenders will not count it at all, others discount it heavily, and the amount you can borrow moves accordingly.

How lenders use the rent varies just as much. One will add a percentage of it to your income. Another will subtract it from the property expenses instead. On identical numbers those two methods can produce approval amounts that are thousands apart, which is precisely why it is worth putting the file in front of more than one lender.

If the suite does not exist yet. Since January 2025 there is an insured refinance that goes to ninety percent of the value the home will have once a self-contained unit is added, well above the eighty percent an ordinary refinance allows. The home must be worth under $2 million, you or a close relative must occupy one unit, the finished property can have at most four, and the suite has to meet zoning. It is the cheapest way to fund building one, and once it is legal and rented the income helps on the next application. Our refinancing page covers the details.

Buying as a family, on one application

Households here are frequently multi-generational, and lenders are perfectly comfortable with that. Combining incomes across the household is one of the most effective ways to reach a price that a single income cannot.

Two things to understand before you sign. Everyone on the mortgage is responsible for the entire debt, not a proportional share of it, so one person's difficulty becomes everyone's difficulty. And whoever goes on title takes on property ownership consequences of their own, including for a parent who already owns their home.

There is a difference between a co-borrower, who is on title and on the mortgage, and a co-signer, who supports the application without necessarily living there. Which one suits depends on the family and sometimes on tax considerations, so it is worth a short conversation with a lawyer or accountant alongside the mortgage conversation rather than after it.

Self-employed income, and the write-off problem

Peel has a large base of small business, trades, transportation and logistics work, and a great deal of local income is self-employed or contract rather than salaried.

The recurring issue is not that the business is weak. It is that legitimate write-offs reduce the taxable income a lender starts from, so a business that supports a household comfortably can look thin on a Notice of Assessment.

Lenders handle that differently. Some add back a portion of expenses to the declared income. Others will work from business bank statements and deposits. Alternative lenders take a broader view again, at a cost. Our self-employed page sets out what to send and how each route works, and our alternative lending page covers what happens when the conventional route does not fit.

New builds in the north end

Mount Pleasant, Springdale, Northwest Brampton and the newer pockets around Gore Meadows keep producing new construction, which means long closings and a mortgage that has to survive the gap.

What the builder arranged at the sales office is not a firm commitment that lasts until closing. Lenders requalify you shortly before the closing date on your income, credit and debts as they are then, under whatever qualifying rules apply at that point. A job change, a new vehicle loan or a slow year in the business all get a fresh look.

The appraisal is the other exposure. If the home appraises below the price you agreed to earlier, the lender funds against the appraised figure and the shortfall is yours to cover in cash.

Start six to nine months out. Almost every one of these situations has a solution with time, and considerably fewer have one with three weeks left.

The rebates that now come with a new build. For the north end subdivisions this changes the arithmetic considerably. The federal government refunds all of the GST to first-time buyers on a newly built home priced up to $1 million, up to $50,000, on agreements signed from 20 March 2025. Ontario has added a temporary rebate of the full provincial HST, up to $80,000, for agreements signed between 1 April 2026 and 31 March 2027, and that one is open to any buyer making it their principal residence. Up to $130,000 back for a first-time buyer, none of it available on a resale, and it should be in the numbers before you compare a new build against a used one.

How we work

Everything is handled online. Apply from home, upload documents through a secure portal, sign electronically and talk to us by phone or video whenever it suits, including evenings.

Because we are a brokerage, a single application reaches banks, credit unions, monoline lenders, alternative lenders and private funds. On a Brampton file with rental income, several borrowers or a self-employed applicant, the spread between what different lenders will approve is wide enough that shopping it properly is the whole job.