Self-employed increasingly turning to private lenders for mortgages

TORONTO — The self-employed are among the growing number of Canadians turning to private lenders in order to obtain a mortgage.

While many prospective homeowners are driven to alternate lenders because of government-mandated stress tests and poor credit scores, the self-employed often have additional burdens to overcome in proving their income.

“There’s more and more people seeking private loans than ever before and that’s a direct result of government making it more and more difficult to qualify,” says Dan Caird, a mortgage agent with Dominion Lending Centres.

According to the Bank of Canada, private lenders have doubled their share of the mortgage market since 2015, accounting for eight per cent of Canadian mortgages in 2018, and an even greater share in the hot real estate market of Toronto.

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