You can even apply for a mortgage online and that will save you money, too. Clients who sign on for a five-year term will get 2.5 per cent off the posted rate for one year and 0.8 per cent off the remaining four. If rates stay where they are now, that means 4.95 per cent for the first year and 6.7 per cent for the balance of the term. Those are eye-popping numbers. Banks want to capture a whole array of opportunities with their clients.
Mortgages are only part of the bundle.
In other words, TD might not make money by giving you a discount mortgage, but it hopes to make it up when you get a credit card, a line of credit or open a registered retirement savings plan or registered educational savings plan. A spokesman for the bank had another idea. That means big savings. But, to paraphrase an old saying, beware of bankers bearing gifts. Free money is never really free.