If you’re like most borrowers, your mortgage represents the single largest financial commitment you’ll ever make. Getting the right mortgage based on your personal financial situation is incredibly important to achieving your financial goals. Make sure you get the best advice on one of the most important financial decisions you will ever make!
Why Work With Andrew C. MacDonald?
Here are 10 great reasons Andrew is uniquely qualified to provide the best advice to assist with your mortgage planning needs:
Reason #1: Background
By the time Andrew finished his undergraduate degree, he had already consumed more books on personal finance than most people know exist. Having completed an Honours Bachelor of Business Administration with Concentration in Finance, Andrew has been studying finance for over 20 years.
Reason #2: Industry Experience
In his 3rd year of undergraduate studies in 2006, Andrew completed a “mortgage bootcamp” course to learn the ins and outs of mortgages and ran a branch office for a US loan refinancing company. He has been involved in the financial services industry and mortgage brokering ever since.
Reason #3: Credentials
In addition to completing his mortgage agent training, Andrew holds an Ontario Mortgage Broker licence and is a member of Mortgage Professionals Canada. As an Accredited Mortgage Professional (AMP), Andrew has completed a National Proficiency Examination and is committed to continuing education and the highest standards of industry performance.
Reason #4: Hands on Experience
Andrew has completed hundreds of mortgage transactions from beginning to end, trained and supervised other mortgage agents, and most importantly has advised on mortgage planning and structuring needs for upwards of 300+ mortgage transactions per year.
Reason #5: Niche Expertise
Working through hundreds of borrowing-to-invest scenarios has given Andrew unique niche experience on tax-efficient debt structuring for clients looking to use their mortgage as a wealth creation tool. In addition, helping hundreds of investor clients with financing for rental portfolios has given Andrew a unique set of skills around taking investor clients to the right lenders in the right order to best achieve their real estate investing goals.
Reason #6: Tough to Place Know-How
As a private lender himself, Andrew has taught numerous investors how to reap the rewards of private mortgage lending and has successfully worked through many “tough to place” mortgage transactions for his borrower clients. Whether your deal requires credit unions, Alt-A lenders, B lenders, MICs, or private lenders to get funded, we’ll figure out the best option for you.
Reason #7: Real Estate Investor
Having purchased his first rental property at the age of 24, Andrew has been an active real estate investor for the past 14 years and keeps a close eye on mortgage rule changes and the best financing options for investors.
Reason #8: Married to a Realtor & Commercial Mortgage Underwriter
Andrew’s wife is a licenced Realtor which helps him keep a pulse on the market and can provide access to insider info for his mortgage clients. Since 2019 his wife has been working in the mortgage industry as well and is now a full-time underwriter for a commercial lender. Her experience with 5+ unit multifamily financing including conventional, CMHC and private options also serves as an asset to Andrew’s client.
Reason #9: Detail Oriented
With mortgages, the devil is in the details. Andrew is extraordinarily detail oriented and will lay out all the numbers for you in an easy to understand manner with the goal of helping you make logical, well informed decisions you can feel confident in.
Reason #10: Award Winning Team
As part of an award-winning team, Andrew’s clients get access to dozens of lenders and volume discounts not available to all agents & brokers. Rather than asking your bank what they can offer, why not take advantage of more options to get the best results?
Plus, see what other people say about working with Andrew
Don’t just take our word for it, anyone can say nice things about themselves. Check out the Testimonials page or some Google Reviews to see what other people have to say about working with Andrew.
3 Things Andrew Does Differently
Here are a handful of unique things we do which make all of the difference for our clients:
Difference #1: Goals Based Advice
Despite conventional wisdom, the best mortgage for you is not always the one with the lowest rate. The best mortgage is the one which is best suited to your individual financial goals. With mortgages, the devil is in the details and Andrew will explain how any mortgage recommendations are best suited to help you achieve your financial goals.
Difference #2: Showing You The Money
In addition to explaining how mortgage recommendations are best suited to help you achieve your financial goals, we’ll do our best to quantify the ways in which our mortgage recommendations will have a positive impact on your financial well-being. We’ll quite literally take the time to “show you the money”!
Difference #3: Real Pre-Approvals
Most pre-approvals in the marketplace aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on (or the kilobytes or storage space the PDF takes up for those of you who are more tech savvy). The reason is that few lenders will take the time to fully underwrite a mortgage pre-approval and actually spend the time to review income verification documents to confirm the qualifying income that can be used to issue the pre-approval. Unless you’re a full-time salaried employee with a base salary only and no quirks to your financial situation, you’ll want someone to spend the time to give you a pre-approval you can count on.
We don’t send people out shopping on what is likely the largest purchase they’ll ever make with a “wishy washy” pre-approval amount and hope it works out for them. Instead, we’ll take the time to review your file and your complete documentation upfront so you have a rock solid pre-approval you can rely on. In return we ask for only 3 things:
- Cooperation – when we ask you for supporting documentation for your file, please realize that it’s because we need need these items to make sure you’re getting the best possible mortgage financing so provide those documents back promptly.
- Loyalty – we’re going to spend time on your file upfront doing a bunch of work that most mortgage people will only do later on when you have an accepted offer, so please follow through and complete your financing with our team.
- Referrals – if you enjoy having a rock solid pre-approval amount you can rely on and appreciate the upfront work we do for you, please tell your friends, family, co-workers, and anyone you come across who may have a mortgage need about our services. We rely 100% on referrals from our happy clients for our marketing.
Ready to Work With Andrew?
Once you’re ready to work with Andrew for your mortgage planning needs, please reach out to us through the Contact page, or use the button below to book a consultation.