Lending For Investment Properties Getting Tight?

[Brad Gibson]

Anyone else seeing lending tighten up for investment properties?

Called my loan finance broker today to assist with a loan on a buy and hold rental property that I want to put an offer in on today.  It's usually an easy slam dunk process since this is a home that will sell at $40,000 discount to what it is valued by the local CAD and with a little elbow grease will be a great cash flow investment...even in a crappy market.

After getting them on the line, they indicated I would now need 30% down and the interest rate would be 1.5 points higher at around 7%. I did a deal with them in February and was in the mid 5% and 15% down on a 30 year note.

I have a call into my local banker.  They quoted prime plus 1% with 20% down.  The problem is this loan floats and will be for only 5 years.  I tend to like to lock in finance terms long term and not have it float, but this will seem to be the only option.

Just want to see if this is a common occurrence and get any ideas about how best to finance deals in these "uncertain times".