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ING Direct Mortgages

20K views 19 replies 12 participants last post by  brad 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone,
I'm planning on buying my first home this year, and was doing some research on ING Direct's mortgage offerings. I have a TFSA account with them and it's great. I have found mixed reviews on their customer service though, related to their mortgages. However, much of this information is a couple or a few years old. Anyone have any current opinions or reviews? 3.89% for five years fixed sounds pretty good...Thanks.
 
#2 ·
We have our mortgage with ING Direct, no complaints. I have nothing to compare it to, though, as it is our first mortgage. The process went smoothly, but note that they are very careful about who they give loans to, and they do everything by the book -- calling your references, running the credit checks, verifying everything. That's a good thing, but it takes time, and we were biting our fingernails because we didn't get the final approval on the mortgage until a day or two before our offer was set to expire.

You get the initial approval very quickly, 24 hours or so, but that's not the "real" approval.

We'll be up for renewal in a couple of years and will see how that goes.
 
#5 ·
Add me to the camp of happy ING Direct "Unmortgage" customers. I've been with them for nearly 3 years now and can't complain. Friendly, responsive customer service, good online access to my mortgage info and fantastic interest rate (prime - .9% back then).

Their appraisal process was no problem. They essentially performed a "drive by" of the property and their assessment came in at where we had expected it to.

Dan
 
#6 ·
I have an ING Direct mortgage on a rental property and am very happy with their service. They have been very obliging with making changes to the mortgage as interest rates fell, offering a blended rate. The Unmortgage is much more flexible than the mortgages I have with other institutions.

I don't have any savings with ING as I heard that their European banking arm had to be bailed out by the Dutch government during the crash. But I figure that if they are loaning me money, it's their money at risk, not mine.
 
#7 ·
My understanding is that the Canadian operation has to operate as a separate corporate entity, subject to all the banking rules & regulations of Canada, that have served to protect the CDN banking system from defaults. In theory the failure of the parent company should not put the CDN branch at risk. Shareholders might be at risk, but not depositors. At worst the parent company might have to sell the CDN operation lock stock and barrel to pay their debts. But the CDN operation would simply continue under new owners.
 
#9 ·
I had a 5-year variable rate mortgage with ING about 6 years ago, for a $55K loan. They used to have a policy of changing their closed 5-year variable mortgages into open mortgages after 3 years, and I took advantage of that to pay off the remaining balance after about 3.5 years. I'm now shopping around for a mortgage on a rental property, and ING has the best variable rate I can find (P-0.5) so I've applied with them once again. However, I was told it will remain closed for the full 5 years, so I'd have to pay 3 month's interest if I want to sell or switch banks before then.
In all my dealings with their mortgage reps, I've found them to be knowledgeable and helpful, though not always quick to respond. Sometimes I have to leave a few messages or re-send an email, but otherwise their customer service is excellent!
 
#10 ·
monster mortgage

We have an ING mortgage (second mortgage) but we got it through Monster Mortgage. http://www.monstermortgage.ca/ I suggest you go through a broker as they can get the best deals for you and it was actually a very easy process. They check your credit rating once (frequent credit rating checks actually lower your credit score) and lots of banks bid for your business. If you hunted around yourself, each bank will require a credit rating (and that's not good for the reason I mentioned.)

We are very happy with our ING "unmortgage".
 
#11 ·
I am closing next month and i have to make a quick decision about going with a Big Bank like TD as opposed to Going with second line of banks Like ING or PC financial. I have currently an approval from ING bank through a broker for P-0.6 another broker website gives P-0.65 from ING bank. I wish to know anyone having their mortgage with ING bank please post their experience in terms of making extra prepayments also can we manage our Mortgage account online with respect to making prepayments.

Thanks
 
#14 ·
I'm not sure about making prepayment changes online with ING -- maybe if you're changing your regular monthly (or bimonthly) payments you can do that online, but whenever I've wanted to do a lump-sum prepayment I had to do it over the phone.

ING has a reasonably generous prepayment policy (up to 25% of your original mortgage amount in any given year with no penalty). So in theory you could completely pay off a 25-year mortgage in just 4 years; in practice most of us can't set aside enough every year to meet the 25% target.
 
#15 ·
ING has a reasonably generous prepayment policy (up to 25% of your original mortgage amount in any given year with no penalty). So in theory you could completely pay off a 25-year mortgage in just 4 years; in practice most of us can't set aside enough every year to meet the 25% target.
The 25% is also good if you ever need/want to break the mortgage you can prepay 25% to lower the penalty
 
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