Meridian Mortgage Rates

Meridian Credit Union has been offering financial products and services in Canada for over 75 years and is a well-established player in the Canadian mortgage industry. If you’re thinking about getting a mortgage from Meridian, you’ll want to be very familiar with what they offer. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Who is Meridian?

Meridian is Ontario’s largest credit union and the second-largest credit union in Canada, with over 370,000 members. Meridian Credit Union offers mortgage products alongside savings, chequing, investment, and insurance products as well.

Being a credit union, Meridian doesn’t have any public shareholders and operates as a not-for-profit company. Meridian claims that this allows it to focus on members, with all profits going into improving products and services, rather than enriching shareholders.

Meridian mortgage products

Meridian has a large selection of mortgage products. As well as fixed and variable rates, open and closed mortgages, and a variety of term lengths, Meridian offers a range of specialty mortgage products to suit more specific needs.

Fixed-rate mortgages

Meridian offers closed fixed-rate mortgages with term lengths of 1 to 10 years, all with competitive interest rates compared to similar products. A 6-month convertible fixed-rate mortgage is also available, which can be converted to a longer fixed-rate mortgage term at any time. If you need even more flexibility, Meridian also offers a 1-year open fixed-rate mortgage, although it comes with a much higher interest rate than the closed option.

Variable-rate mortgages

Meridian bank variable rates are only offered as 5-year terms. This is fairly common, as variable-rate mortgages are inherently more flexible than their fixed-rate counterparts. This is because they have lower penalties for breaking a mortgage mid-way through a term. Meridian offers 5-year variable-rate mortgages as either open or closed, the latter attracting lower mortgage rates.

Flex Line Mortgage

The Flex Line Mortgage is Meridian’s Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) product, allowing you to access the equity that you’ve built up in your home as a revolving line of credit. As you pay off more of your mortgage, your HELOC credit limit will automatically increase.

Family + Friends Mortgage

Meridian’s Family + Friends Mortgage is a product specially designed for joint mortgages between family and friends (who aren’t spouses or romantic partners). A joint mortgage can help you buy a more expensive home than you would be able to afford on your own or to share the responsibility of your regular mortgage payments.

Meridian Self-Employed Mortgage

Self-employed people can sometimes find it hard to be approved for a traditional mortgage due to a lack of a regular, secured income. Meridian’s Self-Employed Mortgage attempts to solve that problem by offering a mortgage product specially designed for self-employed people.

Meridian Hybrid Mortgage

The Meridian Hybrid Mortgage is a somewhat unique product, aimed at helping young people, who are early in their career, purchase a more expensive home than they might otherwise be approved for.

It involves splitting the mortgage principal into two parts - a small traditional mortgage, and a larger interest-only mortgage. The idea is that for the first 5 years of the mortgage, your regular payments will be lower because you’re paying off less of the principal. Then in 5 years, you’re hopefully earning more and can afford to increase your regular payments.

As you can see, it’s a slightly more complicated product than a regular mortgage and suits a specific kind of borrower.

How to get a mortgage from Meridian

You can get a Meridian mortgage in one of two ways: by contacting the bank directly (online or in a branch), or by speaking to a mortgage broker.

The benefit of using a mortgage broker is that they can give you and your finances a personal, expert assessment, as well as a set of recommendations. As well as comparing mortgage rates between multiple lenders (including Meridian) a broker can negotiate on your behalf, and may be able to secure a lower interest rate than those that are advertised in public.